“Parliament’s forces are on the move,” said Matthias. “He’s going to try it.”
Matthias was in full battle gear—not the gold-worked breastplate and shimmering epaulets Galas had always seen him in before. In plain black leather and iron, he looked like a common soldier now, except for the red flag rising above his back that signalled his rank. Nothing he could have said or done could have projected the gravity of the situation more than this simple change of clothing.
Galas was briefly ashamed. She was dressed as always in velvet and gauze finery. She pictured herself picking up a sword, strapping on a shield and entering the fray like some barbarian queen. She would love that. She would love to do anything rather than what she had to do.
Regally, she nodded to Matthias. “Go then. You have my complete confidence.”
“My lady…” For a second his composure cracked. He was an old man suddenly, saddled with an impossible task. They would lose this battle; both knew it.
Galas smiled most carefully; her responsibility now was to act the part for which she had been born. So that these people died believing in… something, anything. Even if it was a failed dream.
“Dear Matthias, I only meant I would wish to have no one else in command of my force, now or ever.”
“Thank you, your majesty.” He bowed. “But I have given equal authority over to General Armiger. He will be commanding the defense of the gate.”
“Good.” He bowed again, and turned to leave.
“Matthias?” She couldn’t go through with it—perhaps she could hide her true feelings from the rank and file, but it would be unworthy to do so to her closest friends. When he looked back with a puzzled look, Galas said, “No one should have to die for me.”
He glared at her. “You are the rightful monarch and heir, blessed by the Winds. We would all be honored to die to defend you.” He walked quickly away.
Galas stared after him. She felt a stab of pain in her chest—sorrow made physical—and hugged herself miserably.
Dawn had just broken. Morning light slanted in through the ruined windows of the great hall. The shattered flame pattern worked in stained glass seemed like a centuries-old joke only now reaching its punch-line. To hinder Lavin’s men from gaining access to the tower through the thin walls of the hall, Matthias had doused everything in here with oil. This great chamber would be an oven soon.
Men in heavy battle armor ran back and forth, faces blank with concentration or fear. One or two even laughed, but it was forced bravado; they knew she was here, they wanted to prove themselves to her even in this situation.
She should be doing something.
“You!” She pointed at one of the running men. He stopped dead in his tracks.
“Your majesty?”
“I wish to give a… a final address to the commanders. Are they here?”
He shook his head. “They’re dispersed about the walls, your highness. To call them back would be…”
She waved her hand. “Go on. I’m sorry. Go on.”
They were bringing in ladders to lean up against the tall windows. She was just in the way now. Galas stepped back to let a procession of men past, then flipped the hem of her dress up over the pooling oil, and stalked back into the tower.
It was even worse in here—pandemonium as blacksmiths, carpenters, and anybody with nothing better to do tore up the floorboards of the tower’s back entryway. Armiger had some use for them; no one questioned the sanity of the move. Only half the first floor was wood anyway; the front reception area had a floor of marble. She hurried, hopping up the wooden servants’ stairway while sweating men tore the steps out behind her.
“Can I help?” she asked one of the sappers, who was straining with a crowbar against the ancient wood.
He lost his grip and stumbled. “Your—your highness?” He went down on one knee, inadvertently stabbing his shin on an upthrust nail. He ignored the injury, and awaited her orders.
She reached out. “Please—I want to help. Tell me what to do.”
He jerked back in horror. “Your highness, no! This is hard work, and it’s not safe. You should be above, in the stone halls where fire won’t reach.”
“I see.” She made her face into the royal mask again. With a curt nod, she left the man to his work, ascending to the marble-floored corridor that led to the tower’s entrance hall.
She came out on the first landing above the main entrance. This part of the Summer Palace had been held sacred by the defenders until last night. It had remained as she remembered it from infancy, the paintings, chandeliers, statuary all in place, the servants ready in their niches. Now the great bronze doors were invisible under piled stone and bracing timbers, and the deep carpets and tapestries were grey with powdered stone and sawdust from the effort of blocking up the entrance. There was no one here now, but overturned tables and other barricades lay ranked like pews aimed at the entrance. Should the attackers get this far, the defenders would assail them from behind these barricades, killing and dying to prevent even so much as a single man from running up the stairs that had been built to welcome visitors. They would all die in the end, of course, and they knew it. Lavin’s men would spill into the tower; they would force her duennas up against the walls and kick down her door. By then she would be dead. Everyone knew that too. But nothing in heaven or earth could alter the course of things.
Except one thing…
Galas’ breath caught in her throat. She nearly fell, and braced herself on the stone balustrade that she had slid down once as a girl—when she was merely the mad princess.
If she were to die now, the siege would end without further bloodshed. It was simple.
“Oh,” she said aloud. If she cast herself from the tower, in full view of both attackers and defenders, then Matthias would live, Armiger and his Megan would live, her maids and cooks and the refugees from the experimental towns would be spared. They would be so disappointed in her, of course; and no one would ever follow the teachings of a suicide.
They won’t understand, she thought, as she walked slowly up the flight that led to the audience chamber. “How could they?”
She had no one person to love. Of necessity, she had to love all those around her—her defenders, the naive and idealistic fools who had swallowed her half-truths knowing them for what they were but keeping faith that she reasons to lie, that she would lead them to earthly salvation. In the end, her written ideology, the philosophy and new morals she had preached, were all means to an end. That end could never be reached; Armiger had taught her that. If so, then what mattered their disappointment, their disillusionment? They would hate her for leaving them alive, but they would be alive, and a life lived in bitterness was still better than a death colored by useless fanaticism.
She entered the audience chamber. Three of her duennas stood about the room, looking aimless and scared. They rushed to her when she entered, but said nothing. Their eyes searched out hers.
“Every enlightened path can turn on itself, and become a new tyranny,” she said. “The process begins the moment you truly, in your heart, believe in yourself.”
“Your highness, are you all right?” Their hands touched her arms, her dress. Like everyone else, they were coping with the fear of death by displacing their concerns on her.
“Leave me!” She stepped out of their grasp. “I am as I have always been.”
Before they could answer or follow, she ran across to the side entrance that led to her apartments. Slamming the door behind her, she bolted it.
Two more of her maids stood here in the little chamber where she had met with Lavin. They were staring at her, openmouthed.
“Go away!” She swept past them.
Ah. The stairs to the roof. This was all too simple, really. She had done her best, but the majority of people would simply never understand her. Armiger was right—the only paths forward for humanity lay in the tyranny of some demagogue or an inflexible ideology, or worst of all the tyranny of condescension. There were no queens or kings in the great interstellar civilization of which Armiger spoke. There was no one who stood in a position to gaze down upon it all.
She was halfway up the steps when her legs gave out. She wasn’t winded; some force seemed to push her down against the stones.
It was like a black cloud on the edges of her vision—some thought she was denying herself. What had she been saying to herself just now? Tyranny—yes, the tyranny of condescension. Her reasons for this were—they were—
The world had narrowed to the grainy stones centimeters below her. She was gasping, unable to breathe. The kingdom—her plans—
Lavin.
She gave a shriek and lurched to her feet, stepping on the hem of her gown and tearing it. Zig-zagging, bouncing off the walls of the stairwell, she stumbled to the rooftop.
There were men here; catapults. They were staring out at the smoke. Distant thuds signalled incoming missiles from Lavin’s steam cannon.
There was an open coign, across an open span of roof. She only had seconds now to endure this certain knowledge that the one person whom she had loved had come to kill her.
There were no more defenses. The guardian thoughts, her plans, the abstract perfection of her self-built ideology, lay in ruins. Galas was alone with the unendurable pain of her own failure, and so she ran to the edge of the roof with one hope in mind, that the stones of the courtyard would raise a wall against the pain once and for all.
She flung herself forward, saw the stones below and knew release—
—and was pulled back from the brink by shouting men.
Galas screamed, and fought, and screamed again. Struggling, screaming, she was dragged back across the roof and down the stairs, to the waiting arms of her duennas.
*
Calandria May stood next to one of the steam cannon. She held her section of a long ladder over her head, and listened with the other men as their commander told them the riches awaiting those who had volunteered to be first to storm the palace walls.
The steam cannon hissed and bucked, distracting her with its raw primitive power. It was a simple device—just a boiler that aimed its steam at a crude turbine. The turbine turned a wooden wheel like a narrow mill wheel six meters across. Instead of scooping water, its vanes took up gravel and stones and white hunks of rock salt from a hopper underneath, swept it around and up through a covered section and released it at the top of the circle. A steady stream of gravel and stones spewed at the walls, bringing back a crackling sound like a distant rockfall.
Her force was one of ten taking up positions near the main gates of the palace. The steam cannon had swept the walls like brooms, knocking the defenders down or sending them scurrying for cover. Cannon inside the walls were firing back, but they were now firing blind. Every now and then a stream of falling stones would send one of the assault teams to ground. Some men were hit, and when they fell they often didn’t get up again.
Taking the main gates directly was impossible. The portcullis was sunken by about four meters, and the ceiling of the entranceway was full of murder holes. The defenders were waiting to pour molten lead on anyone who tried to enter that way.
Lavin’s army was on the move all across the valley. The long wall that surrounded the palace would be assaulted in at least ten places within her sight, and she had no doubt Lavin had forces coming in from the north as well. There was no way the besieged force could man the entire stretch of wall. They would have to pull back.
When they did it would be to the tower that loomed above the main gates. Everything important would happen there. The queen was there. Armiger would be there too.
A sword hung from Calandria’s belt. Over her back was slung a long, burlap-wrapped object that clanked when she moved. The microwave gun was heavy, but it was the only thing in the arsenal of nanotech seeds from Marya’s ship that stood a chance of knocking down Armiger. When flights of stones rained down from beyond the walls, Calandria moved to shelter it before covering her own head. Without it, she had no reason to be here.
A distant roar reached her ears. A kilometer down the valley, the first assault wave ran forward, carrying their ladders like gangs of ants. Figures on horseback gestured with swords. Behind them, the steam cannon inched closer to the walls.
Her heart was hammering. When she looked around, she saw the same expression of mindless fear in the eys of the men with her. They were all in the same boat—carried forward by habits of training, minds blank with fear hence too stupid to sensibly turn and run. It was this stupor of fear that would later be counted as courage.
A loud crack sounded from ahead; the sound echoed across the valley and back. Looking up she saw a section of the gate tower’s wall tumbling outward in a cloud of dust. The heavier cannon stationed a hundred meters behind her had found a weak point. Now a black hole became visible under the drifting grey pall.
“That’s it, lads! Our door!” The commander bellowed and windmilled his arms, and Calandria found herself running forward with the others, thinking nothing, looking everywhere for a place to hide, a foxhole, a barricade, anywhere out of sight of the men with her who would see her hide; and they too looked around with the same eyes, and continued to run.
For a while she had to concentrate on her footwork, chained as she was to her companions by the heavy ladder. When she next looked up they were under the walls, and dark smoke was pouring out of the hole in the gate tower.
Sand exploded where she’d been about to step. Nearby someone screamed. She heard heavy bangs tha must be musket fire. The ladder jiggled. Someone cursed monotonously over and over again; others coughed and over it all lay the rattle of falling rocks, the thud of footfalls and distant booming.
“Halt!” She halted. “Ladder up!” She hopped, pushing it as it miraculously lofted up onto the perspective-narrowed white wall of the tower. The rockfall noises had stopped, meaning the steam cannon had been turned away to let them climb; but that also meant the defenders could emerge from hiding.
Sure enough, more stones and musket balls were coming down. She reached back, feeling the burlap for any sign it had been hit. No.
The first men went up the ladder. Two promptly fell down again. Everyone had their shields up, grinning humorlessly at one another under their shadow as unidentifiable stuff thudded off the wood.
The mob pressed her forward, and suddenly Calandria was climbing, squashed between a man ahead and a man behind her.
Up twelve rungs, over a broken one, left hand closing on splinters, right on slick blood. The man above her stopped, began cursing wildly. Everyone below shouted at him. “I’m hurt, I’m hurt!” he cried; drops of blood hit Calandria’s arm as he struggled with his shattered shoulder.
“Get off! We don’t give a damn! Boy, cut his ham-strings! Get him off the ladder or we’re all done for!”
She glanced down. The fall would kill him. “Do it!” shouted Maenan, who was on the ladder behind her. “Do it or I’ll cut you down and do it myself.”
Something big fell by her left shoulder. Calandria drew the knife from her waist and reached up. “You’ve got to move,” she shouted at the injured man.
“I can’t jump,” he screamed. “I’ll die!”
Maenan stabbed Calandria in the ankle. She cursed and thrust upward herself.
“You bastard,” whimpered the injured man. “Bastard.” He shot her a deeply offended look. He was barely twenty-five if that, with black stubble, dark eyebrows and surprisingly long eyelashes above his blue eyes. “Bastard,” he said, blinking, and then he let go of the ladder.
Just climb. She did, but she was crying.
There was screaming above. Another dark shape plummeted past. Before she knew it Calandria was at the hole in the wall, sucking lungfulls of wood smoke. Blinded, she groped for the broken stones, and pulled herself into the breach.
It was hot here—burning hot. Somebody was crowding her from behind, so she had no choice but to go forward and suddenly realizing she was stepping into a fire she staggered and went down on one knee.
Flames licked up her leg. Calandria screamed and flung herself forward, rolling past burning logs and coming to a crouch on the inside of a very large hearth. The smoking body of a man lay across the logs next to her. In the lurid light of the fire she saw men struggling in a large triangular room.
The defenders were picking off her people as each one staggered out of the broken fireplace. Everyone who came up this ladder was going to die.
A sword swung down, clipping her arm and sending a spasm of pain through her shoulder. Calandria rolled, did a sweep with her foot and was rewarded as her attacker fell over. She vaulted over him and straight-armed the man behind him. The room was a maze of armed men; she ducked and kicked and tried to get to the door.
Swords fell across her back and jabbed her flanks. Her package clanked. She cursed and redoubled her efforts.
She got turned around and ended up in a corner. It was slaughter over by the fireplace. Maenan was dead, as was every one of the men she had met over the last several days. Three desperate defenders faced her now, with more behind them.
She had hoped to delay using her weapon until she confronted Armiger-and not only because its presence would alert the Winds. “Sorry,” she said, and swung the package off her shoulder. She pulled the burlap off the gun and raised it just as they closed on her.
The microwave gun chuffed, and fire shot to left and right from its barrel as first of its nano-built energy charges let go. The man in front of her coughed and went down. She turned the weapon on the next one and then the next. She was screaming now, tears streaming down her face making it hard to see.
As soon as the door was clear she ran for it. The only thought in her head was to find Armiger now and free herself from having to kill anyone else.
She found herself on the battlements. Two walls ran from this gate tower to the main tower of the palace, forming a narrow avenue. There were two steam cannon down there, ready to send their streams of gravel at anyone who made it through the gates or—
—made it onto the walls.
She saw the blur of flying rocks an instant before they tore the flagstones from under her.
*
Lavin had given his instructions. There was nothing he could do now but trust Hesty and the other commanders. He hated to leave the siege in the middle, but he was doing the right thing. For the first time in months, he felt calm, in control of the situation.
“Where’s our grave robber?” He snapped his fingers impatiently.
“Here, lord.” Enneas jogged up. The man looked much better than he had a few days ago; his ruined back was covered in salves and bandages, then the protective casing of a breastplate. His broken arm was in a cast, and the bruises on his face were almost faded. He saluted with his free hand.
Lavin nodded to him. “We’re going in.”
They stood among the tumbled stones of the ruined temple a kilometer east of the summer palace. From here, a sand-drifted causeway led to a square gate tower that had once been the main entrance to the palace. The gates of that tower had long since been sealed with heavy stones, and the causeway was left to the mercies of the desert. What Enneas and a few others had known, however, was that other processional causeways built in the same era as this one all contained narrow passages deep inside the masonry. Lavin’s sappers had found the “spirit walk” right where Enneas had said it would be. They had penetrated all the way to the palace, and turned back only when they came to the labyrinth of the old catacombs. Enneas would be the guide through those; more than that, he was Lavin’s good-luck charm.
“You understand the plan,” Lavin said to Hesty as he followed Enneas into the dark square mouth that opened under a half-fallen wall of yellow stone. “The assault on the walls is a diversion, but it has to genuinely tie up their forces. We want to pull them out of the tower to the walls. My force will penetrate the tower and take the queen. When we signal by trumpet you will cease the assault.”
Hesty shook his head. “I understand that. What I don’t understand is why you have to be the one to go inside.”
“I’m the one who’s responsible. And I want to ensure the queen’s safety.”
“It’s dangerous, sir. If you die—”
“Then you continue the assault until we’ve taken the queen by other means. What I’m trying to do is end this by the cleanest possible means. It’s worth risking myself at this point.”
He stared Hesty down. Finally the man saluted. “All right.” Lavin ducked his head and entered the cool darkness of the tunnel. Enneas waited there with fifteen men, the elite of Lavin’s personal guard.
Four of the men had bugles; three had bull’s-eye lanterns. They were crowded into a little antechamber next to a narrow slot in the wall. Had he not known this was a tunnel, Lavin would have taken it for a chink between two of the causeway’s huge foundation stones.
“M’lord.” Enneas took one of the lanterns and, turning sideways, slid into the gap. Lavin watched him worm his way in, expecting to see him get stuck at any moment. He kept going, however, and after a moment Lavin reined in his own fear and followed.
Cold stone pressed against him from all sides. He had to turn his head and shuffle sideways, keeping an eye fixed on the wavering light of Enneas’ lantern. If that light were to vanish he might give in to fear here, though he never had on the field of battle.
He went a hundred meters like this, panic rising gradually as he came to understand just how far underground he was. Finally the passage opened up a bit, and he was able to crowd in next to Enneas, who had paused to wait for him.
“This is my domain,” said the old man. “The discarded trash of the noble lifestyle. Look.” He held up the lantern; the light glittered off metal near the floor.
“What’s this?”
“Offerings to the Winds of the earth,” said Enneas, his voice rich with contempt. The lantern light glittered off coins and some brass candlesticks that lay half-buried in the sand. “You see these words?” He indicated some lettering scratched into the walls. “It’s a letter from the foreman of the work gang here, to the Winds. Asking them to bless his family for the offerings.” He snorted. “I could live for six months off the coins here.”
Lavin admired his passion, but shook his head anyway. “For all you know, the Winds did bless his house. Come, we’ve no time to dawdle.”
Enneas went on, grumbling. Lavin’s men padded quietly behind as they wove through a low undulant tunnel with a sandy floor. The air was cold and dead, and it would have been silent except that faint drum-beat thuds sounded at irregular intervals. Steam cannon impact, he realized.
As they progressed, the intermittent thumps grew louder and louder, until with each one dust and grit shook loose from the low ceiling. Enneas glanced back several times, a worried look on his face. Lavin gestured for him to keep going.
After one particularly solid thump, a low sliding noise came from ahead of them. It went on for a few seconds. When silence fell again Lavin could hear Enneas swearing.
“What is it?”
“I don’t want to speculate. Come on.” They went forward faster now. The air was becoming thick with dust; Lavin could barely seen the glow of the lantern now. His fear of the confinement was gone now, replaced by a very real worry about the effect his bombardment was having on the tunnel.
Enneas cursed loudly. Lavin bumped against him; he had stopped.
The old grave robber waved the lantern, showing how the walls leaned in suddenly, and tumbled stone choked the remaining space between them.
Enneas looked over his shoulder; the faint light silhouetted him, so that he looked like a man-shaped hole amidst the amber angles of stone. “It’s a cave in,” he said. “We’re stuck.”