An earthly crown

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The monitor implanted in David's ear buzzed, stirring him out of his drowsy lassitude. The candle had burned out, leaving the little room in darkness. Even the high window, paned with a transparent substance stronger than glass, let through only the light of stars, not enough to illuminate anything more than dark shapes against darker background. The dark of the moon.

"Oh, hell, I've got to go," he said, sitting up.

Nadine yawned and pulled her legs up so that he could scoot past her. "Umm," she said, and fell silent, undisturbed by his nocturnal comings and goings. She ought to be used to them by now, he thought, glancing back at her as he struggled to get his clothes on. He swore as he got his trousers tangled up. He shook them free and tried again.

"David." He felt more than saw that she raised herself on an elbow to peer at him. "You aren't married. Do people think you ought to be?"

"No. I don't think it's any of their business, anyway. Do people think you ought to be married?"

"Of course." Her tone was caustic. "I even have a suitor, who would mark me in a moment if he didn't know that I'd cut him to ribbons if he tried."

"You don't like him?"

She shrugged. "I like Feodor well enough. He's a pleasant lover. But he doesn't care about Jeds or anything I learned there. He doesn't care about maps. He doesn't wonder about anything, he just rides in his uncle's jahar and acquits himself well in battle, and is a good son to his mother and a good brother to his two sisters. He doesn't have any imagination, David!"

"And you have enough for two people. A trait I'm rather fond of." She smiled at him, and David grinned back. It was one of her great charms: he was fond of her, and she of him, and yet there was no possessiveness in their relationship. They shared what they shared while they shared it. Beyond that, they had their own lives. "But if you don't want him, then what is there for people to complain of in your behavior?"

Her voice darkened to match the room. "Because women aren't supposed to have any choice in marriage. Because every woman ought to be married, so that she can have children."

"Do you want children?" He gave up trying to get his trousers on standing up because he couldn't manage to keep his balance. He sat down and slid them on one leg at a time.

"No. I want to ride."

"With the army?"

"I like the army. I'm a good commander, too. I'd rather explore, though, like Marco."

"Like Marco!" He chuckled and stood up, fastening his belt on. "Yes, you and Marco would make a good team."

"Thank you," she said. "I admire him. He reminds me of Josef Raevsky, but perhaps you don't know Josef."

"No, I'm sorry. Listen, Dina, I have to go."

"Why? I know the prince is expecting a party to arrive from the coast, but surely they won't arrive until daylight. How can you know which day they'll arrive, anyway?"

David sighed. He was growing annoyed with this constant slippery sliding he had to engage in to get around her tireless, curious questioning. It would have been easier if he'd never taken up with her, but he liked her, damn it, and as the days passed he found his irritation being directed more and more at Charles. Charles should never have proclaimed the interdiction if he didn't mean to hold to it. Damned hypocrite. It wasn't Charles who had to dance the delicate dance of truth and lie to avoid giving away privileged information, to avoid the betraying slip of the tongue, to avoid telling this stubborn, affectionate spitfire that her beloved uncle was unconscious and possibly dying.

"I'm sorry." Nadine lay back down. "It's none of my business."

Which only made him feel worse. He went back and kissed her, and left, thankful that she was both sensible and understanding. He padded down the hallway to Charles's room. The door was latched shut. He knocked twice, a pause, and twice more. Jo opened the door. He slipped inside. Inside, Cara Hierakis's image stared at him without seeing him.

"— preliminary signs show that he's no worse for the wear. He's weak, as might be expected after almost sixteen days in a coma, and he's a damned difficult convalescent, if you ask me, but I don't at this time expect a relapse."

"How is Tess?" asked Charles.

"She's ecstatic. Hello, David." The image raised its eyebrows and glanced behind itself, toward nothing they could see. "Her health is fine. I must go."

"Off here," said Charles. The image snapped and dissipated into nothing. A cold light illuminated the room, a steady gleam that seemed alien to David's eyes after the flickering lantern light he was growing used to.

"What happened?" David asked.

"Bakhtiian came out of the coma and seems fine, if weak.''

David put a hand to his chest. He felt-relieved, and was surprised to find himself so happy. Certainly he had no reason to care about Bakhtiian and perhaps good reason to wish him dead. "That's good news to give to Na-dine," he began, and then remembered that Nadine didn't know that her uncle had even been in a coma.

' 'We've got the landing scheduled for three hours from now," said Charles, dismissing the momentous news as if it was of trivial importance. "We'll split the party. Marco and Rajiv and Jo to the landing site. Marco, you'll stay with the shuttle for as long as they stay on-site. Rajiv and Jo will escort the technicians back here. David, you'll run interference with the jaran, since you have the best excuse to be able to speak khush well. Did you come up with any ideas on keeping them out of the way?''

David sighed. "I'll run a survey tomorrow of the north and west walls and gardens, a real old-fashioned kind with string and survey markers, and I'll ask for help. I can use quite a few of them doing that, and perhaps keep the rest entertained."

"Maggie?" Soerensen asked.

"Mother Avdotya has already agreed to let me observe the worship services and also I have her and a few of the older priests willing to let me interview them tomorrow about their myths and the history of the palace as they know it. I'll make it all last as long as possible."

"That will have to do. I'm most concerned about Mother Avdotya and Nadine Orzhekov, since they seem consistently to be the ones who are most likely to notice anomalies in our behavior. Do your best."

"Nadine will be interested in survey methods," said David. He glanced at Marco, who lounged casually against one wall, arms crossed on his chest. "She said she admires you, Marco, because you're an explorer."

Marco chuckled. "What? Does she want to join me?"

"Yes. I rather think she would, if she could."

Marco shrugged. "And why not? She's quick on her feet, a better fighter than I am, smart, and curious." He cast an inquiring glance toward Charles. "Why not?"

"One bridge at a time," said Charles. "She is also Bakhtiian's niece, and I believe his closest living relative. She has a duty to him."

"A woman's duty in this kind of culture," said Maggie, "is usually to get married and produce heirs. Neither of which I see her doing. I like her. I wish we could take her back with us."

The comment produced silence that was sudden and uncomfortable.

"Fair trade," said Marco with a twist of his lips that wasn't quite a smile. "The sister for the niece."

"I don't think so," said Charles smoothly. "Now. You'd better go. You've got a long ride, and it's dark out there."

Rajiv gathered up his hemi-slate and the six long tubelights they were going to use for trail lights and landing markers. Marco shrugged on his cape. Jo pulled a second, heavier tunic on over her clothing and belted it at her waist. Without further ado, they left. Maggie went with them, to escort them down to the stables and run interference, as Charles called it, in case anyone came investigating this nocturnal exodus.

"Is there a problem, David?" Charles asked abruptly.

"A problem?" The question took David aback.

Charles sat down on his bed and considered David with that level, bland gaze that had come to characterize him. However busy he might be, however many pans he might have frying in the fire, he never did two things at once. If he spoke to a person, singling that person out, then all his attention focused on the conversation. Even his hands sat at rest, folded neatly in his lap. David knew how deceptively mild his expression was.

"You're upset about something," said Charles, "and I don't keep sycophants around because they don't do me any good."

Thus neatly forcing David to speak his mind, even if he was reluctant to. "It's this damned interdiction. It's hypocrisy and you know it. I'm tired of lying to Nadine-well, to all of them, if it comes to that, but to her in particular. Don't you think they know we're holding things back? Aren't we harming them more by being here than-?"

"Than if we hadn't come at all? No doubt about that. But Tess came here, and so here we are. Think of it as damage control."

"It's not damage control," said David. "Oh, Goddess, you mean that message that came in this morning."

"About the actor running away? Yes, in part that."

"What are you going to do about him?"

"Rajiv is hunting down the code on that transmitter. We'll likely get a fix on him within five or ten days. If he's still alive by then."

"You're cool about it."

"David, you know me better than that."

"You've changed, Charles. I say that as one of your two oldest friends."

Charles regarded him evenly. "What choice? No choice. I do what I must." He gave a short laugh and grinned, looking for an instant so much like the young man David had met at university that David might almost have thought they were the same person again, and that the gulf that had grown between the old Charles and the new one had suddenly closed. "Bakhtiian confided in me before we left the army that he couldn't tell what he could and couldn't believe out of all the things Tess had told him."

"If he expected you to enlighten him, then I'm sure he was disappointed.''

"You are angry."

"It's disrespectful, beyond anything else," said David. "Treating them like children-as if we know better, as if we have to protect them."

"The interdiction did protect them."

David sank down into the single chair and rested his forehead on a palm. "Which is true. Oh, hell, Charles, it's just an untenable situation."

"Yes," Charles agreed without visible emotion. "Remember as well, David, that this is the only planet we have any real control over, because of that interdiction. Chapalii can't come here without my permission-or, if they do, as that party that Tess fell in with did, they must do it covertly. We can't afford to lose that power. Cara can run her lab in Jeds precisely because the Chapalii can't investigate it at their whim. This is our-our safehouse. Our priest hole. Our hideaway. Not to mention the entire philosophical issue of whether it would be ethical to ram our culture and technology down their throats in the name of progress. So it's to my advantage to keep the interdiction in force."

"Even if you break it yourself."

"Even so. I'm not a saint, David."

"However much you try to be?"

Charles chuckled, a refreshingly and reassuringly human sound. "I only try to be because I know that whatever I do wrong will come back to haunt me tenfold. I don't like this situation any better than you do. If we took Tess away, we'd be quit of it."

David lifted his head off his hand. "Would you force her to go? Could you?"

"Of course I could. I control this planet, David. Would I?" He thought about it. The little room the priests had given him to sleep in mirrored him in many ways: simple, plain, without obvious character. But David knew that behind the plain whitewashed walls ran a complex network of filaments and power webs and ceramic tiling for strength and the Chapalii alone knew what other technological miracles and contrivances, hidden from sight but always present, there where they couldn't be seen. "I don't know. I haven't been forced to make that decision yet.''

"Goddess help them both when you do."

"Both?" asked Charles.

"Both Tess and Bakhtiian. And his people. And the countries in the path of his conquest. He's a madman. You could stop him."

"I could kill him physically. I could tell him, show him, the truth, which Tess believes would kill him spiritually. What's so strange about him, though? Earth has had such men in her past."

"Does that make it right? Knowing we could intervene?"

"I don't know. Is intervening right? Will it make any difference in the long run? Does this argument have anywhere to go except around in circles? He's better than most, David. He thinks, he's open-minded and curious, he cares about law and legal precedence, and I believe he cares enough about what Tess thinks of him that he'll temper brutality with mercy.''

"Like that man he executed for rape? He did it himself, and he didn't look one whit remorseful about the act to me."

"Who knows? Perhaps killing him on the spot like that was a merciful punishment, compared to what he might have received."

"Without a trial?" David demanded.

"He had a confession. But I can't help thinking about the actor. Three of them alone in hostile territory."

"And horse-stealers, too. That must be punishable by death, under nomad law."

"Do you think their deaths will be easy, or quick?" Charles asked.

"Don't forget, the actor has a weapon with him-one of our weapons. And other equipment. That gives him an advantage."

' 'And it breaks the interdiction in exactly the way I did not want it broken," Charles added.

"In fact, it might well be easier if the poor boy did die, and his companions with him."

"It might well. But then there'd be all that equipment out there to be recovered. Either way…" Charles shrugged.

David felt suddenly heartened. He chuckled. "You know, Charles, I don't envy you. I'm perfectly happy to be sitting here, and you sitting there."

Charles's pale blue gaze met David's brown one. His lips quirked up. "As well you might be. Now, I'm going to get some sleep."

David realized that that was as close to a confession of the burdens weighing on him as Charles was ever likely to give him, or to give anyone. Perhaps Charles could no longer afford to be vulnerable. Perhaps Charles regretted what he had lost but knew well enough that the loss was permanent, that there was nothing of his old self that could be recovered, even if he wanted to.

"Yes," said David on a sigh. "That's a good idea." He stood up and left Charles to his solitary state. Back in his own tiny room, he managed to nap on the hard bed for the few hours until dawn. He woke when the first light bled through the window, and he rose and dressed quickly and hurried downstairs to the eating hall in order to make it in time for breakfast. Maggie was there, although Charles wasn't. She signaled with one hand-"all okay, going as planned." That meant that the riders ought to come in mid-morning, escorting their "party from the coast." What would the jaran make of this Chapaliian visitation? Mother Avdotya had mentioned the khepelli priests who had visited four summers past. Their stay had been short and uneventful with a single exception: they had left with one fewer member of their party than they had come with. This mystery had never been solved, nor had any remains been found of the missing priest. The jaran knew of blood sacrifices, both human and animal, but as far as David could tell, they did not indulge in them except under the most pressing need. He had asked Nadine about it, but she seemed to think such an act shameful, although he could not tell whether that response came from her jaran upbringing or her Jedan education.

What would they think of a Chapalii coming in with Soerensen's escort? With his blessing? Under his authority? Nadine would be sure to be suspicious, and she would give a full report to her uncle. David did not for one instant doubt her loyalty to Bakhtiian, or doubt that she put her loyalty to him and to her people above all else, however much she did not follow their customs in other ways.

Well, it was hopeless. As Charles had said, the argument could run around in a circle and never get anywhere. He saw Nadine and went to sit beside her. She greeted him with a smile and he set to work on the food while discussing with her his plans for a survey of the north front.

"But tell me, David," she said after he had told her of his plans, "I see how you can use this method to measure accurately the dimensions of the shrine. Is there a way to measure greater distances, using the same methods? I can draw out a map with rough accuracy-Josef Raevsky taught me how to do that, and I learned more about maps at the university in Jeds, but still, there must be more accurate methods. Mostly, the jaran measure distances by how long it takes a rider, or a wagon, to get from one place to another. But that's not a good measure. How fast is the rider? Is it a jahar that's foraging as it goes? Is it a wagon train? Is it a messenger, who changes horses frequently and so can ride as far in one day as wagons cover in ten?''

"I'll show you some more about that today," replied David. "If you have two angles and one side, you can calculate the rest of the triangle. That's why I use a staff that's a set length; in my case two meters."

"Yes, I know about triangles. They're one of the gods' mysteries."

David chuckled. "Yes, there is a certain magic to them. Now, look." He took his knife and held it point down, perpendicular to the table. "If you know the height of your measuring staff-this knife-and you know the angle-"

"But I understand that," said Nadine impatiently. "I helped you survey the grounds of the shrine. But what about really long distances? Do you have to measure each stretch of ground you ride over? Add them together, perhaps? How can you reckon distances off to each side, as well? And bring them all together to make an accurate map?"

You put satellites into orbit. You use aerial photography. You use computer-driven navigational instruments and beacons and… "At sea you use a sextant and the altitudes of celestial bodies," said David instead. "On land maybe you don't really need a truly accurate map, because you can use landmarks to guide your travels."

"Yes, but what if you want one?" Nadine insisted. That was the trouble with her; she wasn't content with what just worked.

"Orzhekov!" One of her riders burst into the room, breathing hard from running. "Messenger, riding in."

She jumped to her feet but hard on the man's heels came the messenger himself, wind-blown, pale, looking exhausted. He wore a harness of bells strapped over his shirt. The bells sang as he walked.

"Feodor!" exclaimed Nadine. She froze.

The young man strode across to her. By Nadine's expression, David could guess who it was: the young man named Feodor Grekov, the one Nadine had mentioned with scornful affection. The young man of princely family who wanted to marry her. And David's first thought, unintended and embarrassing, was to wonder if now that Feodor was here, Nadine would throw David out of her bed in favor of her jaran lover.

The bells chimed and brushed into silence as Feodor halted before Nadine. He was good-looking; David could see that even through the young man's fatigue. He looked competent. He looked like exactly the kind of man Nadine had made him out to be: reliable, stolid, and pleasant.

"What news?" she asked, looking worried. "Have you come from camp?''

"Your uncle," he said. The words seemed choked out of him, either from suppressed anguish or from exhaustion; perhaps from both. "He's-" It all came out: Bakhtiian had fallen ill. His spirit had been witched from his body by Habakar priests. No one knew if he was dying, or if he was coming back to them. No one knew.

Nadine stood there dead still. Her mouth was drawn tight, and David could see the pulse beating under her jaw. She looked half in shock. And he couldn't say a thing. He couldn't even reveal that he understood their conversation perfectly, now that he understood khush much better than he dared let on.

"You must return," Grekov finished. "You're his closest living relative."

"I must return," she echoed, but the voice had no force of emotion. Only her drawn face did. She stared out the huge windows onto the gardens, brilliant with summer flowers. David felt sick with guilt, seeing how she suffered with fear for her uncle. Knowing she didn't have to.

Grekov drew his saber. A murmur ran through the men standing around them. Nadine's eyes went wide. She began to draw her own saber. She looked furious. "Grekov, this is no time to-"

But Grekov's aspect had changed, and David mentally added 'stubborn' to the young man's list of attributes. "Mother Sakhalin came to my mother and my aunt and my uncle. They agreed between them that I should set aside my-scruples and mark you. Bakhtiian must have heirs."

Nadine had her saber half out. She seemed suspended, unable to move one way or the other, unable to act, unable to accede. "Our cousins have many fine sons."

"That's true," said Feodor, "but it's properly through his sister's line that Bakhtiian should have heirs. You know it's true. You know it's your duty to marry, if your uncle dies. He may be dead already. Who will the tribes follow then? They would follow your child." He brought his saber to rest on her cheek.

Nadine had gone so pale that David thought she might faint. But, of course, Nadine would never faint. Her saber did not move. Neither did Feodor's. David wanted to tell her, Goddess, how badly he wanted to tell her. But he could not.

Her mouth worked, but no words came out. She shut her eyes, briefly, and opened them again, as if disgusted with herself for trying to hide from what was facing her. Then she slid her saber back into its sheath.

Feodor marked her. She submitted meekly enough, but her eyes burned. Like her uncle, her spirit showed in her eyes, and it was a strong spirit, even in defeat. Blood welled and coursed down her cheek, dripping off her jaw. A drop caught on her lips and, reflexively, she licked it off. Feodor had the grace to look ashamed, and yet, at the same time, he managed to look jubilant, as at an unforeseen victory.

David turned away. He could no longer stand to watch.

"Give me the bells," said Nadine. "I'll ride to my uncle's bedside. You'll stay with my jahar, here at the shrine, until the prince of Jeds is finished with his work here, and then you'll escort him back to the army. Yermolov will act as your second."

It was a trivial revenge; it might be months until they saw each other again, but Grekov did not look disheartened. Why should he be? As far as David could tell, marriage was for life in the jaran. The young rider slipped out of the bells and handed them to Nadine. She slung them over her shoulders and turned to go. Her glance stopped on David, and her mouth turned up in a sardonic smile. She knew he knew and understood what a bitter blow this was to her.

What she did not know was that he could have prevented it.

"I'm sure he'll be all right," David said, impelled to say it. He wanted to shout it: He is all right. He's alive. He's recovering. But it was too late. Perhaps the time would have come inevitably, the pressure for her, Bakhtiian's sister's daughter, to marry and have a child who could inherit through the female line closest to Bakhtiian. It was some consolation. Not much.

"Good-bye, David," she said. He felt as if she were saying good-bye not so much to him personally, or to him as her lover, but to what he represented, the knowledge, the curiosity, the urge to explore and range wide. It was pretty damned difficult for pregnant women and women with small children to range wide.

"Good-bye," he said and watched her go. Grekov watched her go. Her jahar watched her go. The priests, those who were there, watched her go. Yermolov escorted her out to the horses.

Charles walked in by the other door. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

About two hours after Nadine had left, Rajiv and Jo rode in with the Chapalii party. The tall, thin figures of the Chapalii looked doubly alien to David after he'd been so long on a planet where Chapalii did not set foot. David saw them ride in from his vantage point at the northwest corner of the palace, but they were far enough away that he couldn't see them as more than distant shapes. In a frenzy of self-flagellation, he had designated Feodor Grekov to assist him personally in the surveying, with most of the other riders strung out at intervals along the space. He didn't need them, of course, but it served to keep them busy. Feodor was quiet and helpful, and he seemed good-natured. He even asked a few questions, and he seemed interested in the concept of using triangles to measure distance. But he had nothing like Nadine's bothersome, nagging, wonderful curiosity.

David was relieved when dusk came and he could excuse everyone and go inside to eat dinner, to pretend to go to bed. He crept out through the shrine, which he knew like the back of his hand by now, having mapped it twice over, and made his way to the room which hid the control room.

The room sat blank, white, cold, and empty, and as impenetrable as every other time he had been there. Then, a moment later, the wall exhaled and Maggie stood in a dark opening.

"Quick," she said, beckoning. "Come in. It's amazing."

He hurried over to her. A narrow tunnel fell away before him. He followed her back into the blackness. The wall shut behind them and a bright light shone ahead. They came out into a chamber lit with screens and lights and stripes of color. The garish light illuminated five figures: three of the tall, angular Chapalii figures that were as familiar to humans as any ubiquitous authority figure is, and two shapes that seemed squat and thick in comparison: that would be Charles and Rajiv. Maggie took hold of David's arm and dragged him forward. David stared. How could he help but stare? Two flat screens and three holo-screens flashed information past at a dizzying speed. Charles acknowledged David with a nod. Charles stood between two Chapalii, one resplendent in mauve merchant's robes, the other dressed in the tunic and trousers of the steward class. Rajiv was oblivious to anything except the console at which he stood and the Chapalii standing next to him, with whom he conferred in a low, intense voice. Maggie lifted her eyebrows and looked at David, grinning, waiting for him to react.

A Chapalii female! In shape he could not have told any differences between her and the two males. But the skin… Unlike the two males in the room, whose skin was pale, almost dead white, whose skin flushed colors betraying their emotions, the female's skin was dark, a kind of tough-looking, all-purpose gray. It seemed scaly, without being scaled. She wore a lank tail of hair hanging from the slight bulge on the back of her skull. In dim light, he could not have told them apart, except for her thin hank of hair, and that might have been a class difference. But in bright light, she looked alien. The males might pass by some far stretch of the imagination for human, or humanlike, creatures. She had the same build, but her strange coloration, her thick, dry epidermis, betrayed her fundamental otherness. She was weird; she was eerie. And David was used to the idea of unearthly beings.

"So?" David asked, when he found his voice.

"So once we got into the room, Rajiv and the ke-the female servant there-got inside the system within one hour. It's all there, David. The contents of the Mushai's computer banks.''

"We knew that."

"Yes, but we never got past the surface layer before. And there's more, much more than was on the cylinder Tess brought. They've spent the last five hours figuring out how to translate the information off this system and on to some transferable media. Evidently the cylinders only work off the consoles they come from. Like matched sets. Information is so valuable a commodity that it's hoarded just like-like the jaran hoard gold."

"They don't hoard gold," corrected David, "they wear it."

"I think the analogy still holds."

"What if they can't transfer the data off."

Maggie shrugged. "How should I know? Rajiv will probably come live here for the next ten years and transcribe everything manually onto his modeler. But even so he'd never get the hundredth part of it that way. Still, that ke is a brilliant engineer, according to him, and his standards are high. They ought to be able to work something out together."

"David." Charles came over, the merchant at his side. "You have met Hon Echido, I believe."

"Honored," said David, recalling his polite Chapalii. He gave a brief greeting bow, which Echido returned exactly.

"Let's leave them to it," said Charles. "I have no doubt they'll be up all night. And the next day, as well."

Charles gestured to Maggie and David to precede him. Echido waited behind Charles. The steward stayed where he was, presumably to aid Rajiv and the ke, who were oblivious to this desertion. They left the room and walked back through the quiet palace by a roundabout route. Their path took them to the vault of the huge dome. They halted there. The cavernous depths of the hall and the height swallowed them, muffling the sound of their footsteps on the marble floor, making whispers of their voices. In the darkness, the thin pillars that edged the distant curved walls gleamed a pale pink, like a hint of sunrise to come. Above, far above, the dome seemed splintered with stars and luminous cracks and amorphous blots of utter darkness, like a portal onto the depths of space.

David held Maggie's hand, finding comfort in the heat of her skin, in her proximity. Farther off, Charles stood and stared up. Echido stood slightly in front of Charles. In the darkness, his robes, too, seemed luminous, as if fibers of light were woven into the purple fabric. The Chapalii lifted up his left hand. He spoke a sentence.

The dome lit. Everywhere, everything, lights, blinding, scattering, crystal sparking in a thousand colors and rainbows arching in vivid, astonishing geometric patterns so high above in the vault of the dome that they seemed unreachable. Across the marble floor light fragmented into colored patterns, animal shapes intertwined, plants interlaced, helices and chevrons, so bewildering in their profusion that it staggered him. All perfectly placed to create a web of light, a latticework of color, a net of brilliance, that seemed to David's eyes to represent everything and nothing, order and chaos at once. It was glorious. It was uncanny. It was beautiful.

David gaped. Maggie gaped, gripping his hand. Even Charles gaped, for once shocked into speechlessness.

"The Tai-en Mushai," said Echido in his colorless voice, his Anglais fluent and uninflected, "became so notorious that although his name is obliterated forever from the emperor's ear for his rashness, his title lives on nevertheless. Not least because of his sister, who is known as one of the great artists of my people. It is she who designed the Grand Concourse leading from Sorrowing Tower to Reckless Tower to Shame Tower. I am grieved that this achievement here must rest in obscurity."

"End it," said Charles suddenly, startled out of his stupor by Echido's calm voice.

"As you command, Tai Charles." He spoke another sentence. Glory vanished, to leave them shuttered in a darkness which seemed as endless as the void. Silence descended. After some minutes, David could make out the traceries in the dome again, distinguish the faint gleam of the pillars along the walls. He understood Echido's sorrow, that such beauty must be concealed. A moment later he realized how astounding it was, his sympathy with Echido's sadness.

"I humbly beg your pardon, Tai-en," Echido added, "if I have by my rash action troubled you. I recall that this planet is under an interdiction of your making and the emperor's approval."

"No," said Charles, "no, I don't mind this once. I've never seen anything like that. It was…" His voice betrayed his awe. "… beautiful. But it must not happen again, here or elsewhere in this palace, not as long as there are natives on the precincts."

Echido bowed. "To have given you pleasure, however brief, Tai-en, is a great honor to me."

"I am pleased," said Charles, acknowledging Echido's gift. "David has a map of the palace, and I would dearly like to know what other-art-is hidden here, and how it might be brought to life. How did you do that?"

"But surely-" Echido hesitated. "Tai-en, every princely and ducal house holds to itself a motto, I believe you would name it in your tongue. Said thus, it illuminates both the noble lord himself and what his family has created in his name."

"Ah," said Charles. "Of course. How did you know the Mushai's motto? Surely it has been a long time since his name was spoken in the halls of the emperor.''

"Uncounted years," said Echido. "Tai-en." He bowed. "But all know it, still, because its very words are-as reckless as he was. So it remains with us, over time uncounted and years beyond years. 'This hand shall not rest.' That is one way it might translate into your language, although I am sure the Tai-endi Terese could render a more accurate, fitting, and poetic translation."

"I am sorry," said Charles, "that she is not here to see this."

"I, too, Tai-en, am saddened by her absence. Our acquaintance was brief, but I count myself favored that she dignified my presence with her attention." He folded his hands in front of him. David knew that the arrangement of fingers and palm had meaning, that it signified an emotion, a statement, a frame of mind, but he could not interpret it. Tess could, but Tess wasn't here. No wonder Charles refused to let her go. She was invaluable to his cause.

"We must go," said Charles. "I hope no one was awake to see this display, however much I am pleased to have seen it myself. Otherwise there could be awkward questions." He started to walk. Maggie let go of David's hand and paced up beside the Chapalii merchant. David fell in next to Charles. They paused at the buttressed arch that led into a long hall lined with alternating stripes of pale and black stone. Echido and Maggie kept walking, but Charles turned to look back into the vast hollow behind them. From this angle, no lights shone, not even faint ones. It was as black as a cave. Only the immensity of air, palpable as any beast, betrayed the cavernous gulf beyond.

"So what will your motto be?" David asked, half joking.

"I've been reading The Tempest lately," said Charles, his voice as colorless as Echido's. "After what Maggie said. There's a little phrase the sorcerer Prospero says to the spirit Ariel, who serves him." Here in the darkness, David felt more than saw Charles's presence, familiar and yet strange at the same time, here, where he might learn what lay now at Charles's heart. Charles still faced the huge chamber of the dome. His breath exhaled and was drawn in. On the next breath, he spoke.

" 'Thou shalt be free.' "