A Confusion of Princes (6 page)
Read A Confusion of Princes Online
Authors: Garth Nix
:Obey Arch-Priest Morojal <
‘You understand?’ asked Morojal.
‘No,’ I said.
‘But you will obey,’ said Morojal.
I didn’t answer for a moment. But I didn’t need a Priest of the Aspect of the Cold Calculator to work out the odds here. I didn’t really have a choice. Besides, I figured I could tell her I was going to obey and then work out what to do about that later. First of all, I was going to ask Haddad, most particularly about why he was excepted from this command about not mentioning the arch-priest.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You weren’t here, I never heard of you, I don’t talk to any Navy types about it.’
‘The Commandant, Prince Huzand, will expect that your connection will be as swift and commonplace as it usually is and that you will report immediately afterward. As you are not aligned with any senior Prince, and as he is actively recruiting, he will with a 0.98 per cent certainty offer you attachment to his own House, that led by Vice Admiral Prince Jerrazis the Fifth. You will refuse politely and inform him that you do not want to make a decision of this kind yet.’
‘Why should I refuse such an offer?’ I asked. Though I knew very little about the real politics of the Empire, I knew that young Princes invariably attached themselves to more senior ones, at least at the start of their careers, and that over time these mutual cooperation pacts had become formal organisations known as Houses. Since I had to join the Navy, I might as well join a House led by a senior Naval officer.
‘Because the Emperor has other plans for you,’ said Morojal. ‘Which require you to not be associated with any House.’
‘What plans?’ I asked. I wasn’t surprised the Emperor had special plans for me. But with only two years to go until the abdication, there didn’t seem to be any time to waste in getting me ready to ascend the throne. Hanging around the Naval Academy for a year definitely sounded like a waste of time. ‘Are you giving me a ship and sending me out?’
The three pupils of the arch-priest’s eyes rotated in place, like a triple gun selecting a different barrel.
‘No,’ she said coldly. ‘You will be informed of the plans when you need to know them. For now, you will join the Navy, and study to the best of your ability at the Naval Academy, and await instruction.’
:Join Navy. Study hard. Await direct instruction <
‘But I thought being a Prince meant I could make my own decisions!’ I blurted out. I thought, but did not add,
instead of
having my life constrained by priests
.
‘You thought wrong,’ said Morojal tersely. ‘And you are not having your life constrained by priests. You are serving the Empire. Now go!’
My fingers and toes flexed as I regained control over my limbs. I slowly reached over for my rather crusty undergarments and Bitek-slimed vacuum suit, which were very unattractive but better than nothing. As my reluctant fingers pinched one corner of my underpants to pick them up, Haddad appeared at my elbow, offering clean clothing, including what would be my first Imperial uniform: the very dark blue tunic with purple piping of an officer cadet of the Imperial Navy.
I dropped the underwear and looked around. Morojal the arch-priest had disappeared as if she had never existed, and a much older male priest was standing on the bridge, his eyes downcast. The fishing pole had vanished with the arch-priest.
‘The Commandant, Prince Huzand, is waiting for you, Highness,’ said Haddad. He didn’t need to ask me about my connection to the Imperial Mind. I could feel his mental presence as part of a connective web that included an outward link to the Mind, though beyond Haddad all the relaying was opaque to me. Presumably it was being done temporarily by the priests of the Academy, a task that in time would be taken over by priests of my own household.
‘I’d better go and see him then,’ I said as I got dressed, transferred my weapons to the new uniform, and sealed it up. ‘Um, what happens after that?’
‘Usually you would be given a week’s leave or more in order to establish your household, Highness, before commencing the Academy’s training program.’
‘Usually? What do you know, Haddad?’
‘I have no definite information, Highness,’ replied Haddad. ‘However, I have seen that this academy is not entirely run on orthodox lines. Any commanding Prince in such a situation has considerable latitude in how they apply Navy regulations. Prince Huzand appears to have taken that latitude further than most, probably because he is well protected higher up the chain of command by other members of House Jerrazis.’
‘He can’t assassinate me, though, can he?’ I asked, trying hard to disguise my anxiety. The misplaced confidence I had built up over the years had been dissipating rapidly ever since my ascension and had taken some particularly hard knocks in the last little while. ‘Or kill me in a duel or something?’
Haddad didn’t answer immediately, which did nothing to reassure me.
‘A Prince cannot challenge a junior or senior officer of any service while on active duty. Nor would it be legal for a senior Prince to assassinate you. But they can influence more junior Princes in indirect ways. It would be best to presume that this academy is not as secure a territory as I had predicted and wise to keep up a connection to the Imperial Mind at all times.’
‘I’m doing that now,’ I said. ‘I think . . . but I can feel the connection go through you and then priests here in the temple. What if they stop relaying?’
‘The relay is now being undertaken by your own household priests, Highness,’ said Haddad. ‘They were assigned to you several minutes ago, but they will not appear as unique individuals in the relay chain until you have met them. At that point, you will be able to relay to any of them even without me being part of the chain.’
‘I’ve already got some priests? That’s good. Uh, how many of them are there?’
‘You have been assigned twelve, which is more than usual, Highness,’ said Haddad. ‘The number is supposed to be random, as modified by the availability of priests, number of new Princes in the area, and so forth. However, most new Princes would be fortunate to be granted more than a single priest in their first year.’
‘And I’ve got twelve?’
Haddad’s face did not show any surprise, but it sounded like a big deal to me. I’d been given twelve times as many priests as a normal Prince starting out? Maybe I was even more special than I’d thought. My confidence and natural sense of superiority, nurtured for so long in my candidate temple, began to return in full force.
Unfortunately, massive overconfidence is not a survival trait.
‘It is also . . . unusual . . . that all of Your Highness’s priests serve one Aspect, in this case that of the Inward Traveller.’
‘You mean they’re not from the Aspect of the Noble Warrior? I thought this was their temple.’
I didn’t add that the arch-priest I had met was the head of the Aspect of the Emperor’s Discerning Hand. There would be time enough for that later, in more private circumstances. I was very curious that the arch-priest had said I could tell Haddad, and I wanted to know what he thought about it, for I felt he was the one person I could trust, based on what he had already done to keep me alive.
Also, like all Masters of Assassins, he had been directly assigned to me by the Imperial Mind, which meant by the Emperor Hierself, so surely he was completely trustworthy? Though I was a bit confused about that now that I was connected to the Imperial Mind myself. Was it actually the Emperor talking to me when the Imperial Mind spoke in my head? It didn’t feel like an individual, like when a priest was mentally communicating with me. In some ways it was almost like hearing myself think.
‘There are always priests of other Aspects in any temple,’ explained Haddad. ‘However, each temple is consecrated to a particular Aspect and managed by priests of that Aspect.’
‘So I’ve got a dozen Inward Traveller priests. They’re Psitek specialists, right? Navy communication and control? That kind of makes sense.’
‘It leaves your household very weak in Bitek and Mektek, Highness,’ said Haddad. ‘Though perhaps this weakness is counterbalanced by a strong and highly redundant connection to the Imperial Mind. In any case, as soon as Your Highness has been assigned quarters, you will meet your priests. In time I hope we will be assigned more, from other Aspects, and I will also be able to recruit apprentices from the nearest Temple of the Aspect of the Shadowed Blade.’
‘Good,’ I muttered. ‘Uh, how do I get more priests? And how many am I allowed to have, like in total?’
‘The basic allotment is, as we have discussed, somewhat random,’ replied Haddad. ‘More can be granted to you by your superiors in whatever service you join, in this case the Navy, for particular tasks; or by the Imperial Mind, as rewards and acknowledgements of particular services. Certain Imperial honours also come with assignments of priests or other additions to your household. It is worth noting that priests can also be taken away by the same process. As for apprentice assassins, the number depends upon the rank of the Master.’
‘How many apprentices can you have?’ I asked.
‘Between four and forty-eight apprentices, graduated in fours, Highness,’ answered Haddad.
‘So how many can
you
have?’ I repeated.
Haddad hesitated, which was interesting. I thought a Master of Assassins had to answer their Prince’s questions without hesitation. And also act on their orders without delay.
‘Thirty-six, Highness,’ he said, very softly so the priest on the bridge couldn’t hear. ‘But it would be best to keep that to yourself.’
So Haddad was a very senior Master of Assassins indeed. Why had he been assigned to me? And why had I been sponsored to join the Imperial Mind by an arch-priest, the head of an Aspect I’d never even heard about, read about, or suspected existed?
It was all very puzzling, and slowly—much more slowly than I should have—I was beginning to realise that I needed to know a lot more about what being a Prince of the Empire actually meant. In fact, I needed to know a lot more about the Empire.
The naïveté of my youth and the arrogance that had been built up in the process of making me a Prince had combined to make an impressive barrier of ignorance. But that barrier now had the slightest crack in it. At least now I knew that I might not be the best thing the galaxy had ever had the fortune to see, and that I was about as uninformed as a cockroach. Hopefully, despite this lack of information, I would prove to be as impossible to eradicate as those dull, black-carapaced beetles that had accompanied humanity everywhere across the stars.
If I was to prosper, or even survive, I had to become a lot smarter.
Unfortunately, becoming smarter isn’t something that happens immediately. I could have done with being very much more intelligent and knowledgeable before my next encounter with the forces that would shape my life, in this case in the person of Prince Huzand, Captain of the Imperial Navy and Commandant of the Kwanantil Domain Naval Academy.
T
HE TRANSITION FROM the temple to the Naval Academy itself was quickly achieved. We simply followed another plain tunnel drilled through the rock till it ended in a massive armoured door. Two mekbi troopers outside the door came to attention as I approached, and the great slab of metal and Bitek armour cycled open. The corridor on the other side was brilliantly lit and perfectly rectangular, and the bare rock sides were now clad in smooth Bitek panels interspersed with occasional metal plates indicating various access points or emergency equipment storage.
There were four mekbi troopers on this side, who snapped to attention as a bored-looking Prince in cadet uniform with silver epaulettes rose from behind a Bitek desk that had been extruded from the floor. He sketched something in the air that was presumably a salute. I knew from his broadcast that this was Prince Janokh, who was a senior cadet officer, hence the silver epaulettes.
‘You’re six and a half minutes late, Cadet Khemri,’ he said sourly. He looked more closely at me and added, ‘What is that on your face?’
Though I’d wiped it off, the goop had left a bright green stain across half my face, a stain that would need attention from some sort of nanocleanser to remove.
‘Bitek digestive gel,’ I answered. ‘Someone tried to assassinate me on the other side of the temple. I’ll get it cleaned off before I—’ ‘Too late for that,’ said Prince Janokh. ‘The Commandant already ordered you to report at once. Assassination, huh? It looks to me like you just fell in the base recycling swamp.’
‘No, the bridge I was on was destroy—’
‘Save it for your biography,’ interrupted Janokh. ‘And get a move on.’
At the same time, he sent me directions, providing the required path as an illuminated overlay I could call up over my normal vision.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He didn’t respond, turning back to his desk with studied indifference.
As I hurried along the white corridor, I thought about my first two meetings with other Princes. Both had been surprising, in their own ways. I had not expected to see Princes in such menial tasks as commanding a patrol of mekbi troopers, at least not in person. And I certainly didn’t expect to see a Prince sitting at a desk as a not at all glorified doorkeeper.
Everything I had read or seen about Imperial Princes to date always had them on the bridges of mighty warships, or directing vast enterprises from the centre of a glittering headquarters, surrounded by attentive priests. It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be some intervening stage before even a Prince of the Empire could reach those heights of power.
Perhaps you could call it an awakening of sorts. I was busy thinking about all this as I turned down another equally featureless corridor of white, descended a riser (checking it myself before Haddad could do so), passed another pair of mekbi troopers and another great armoured door, and entered the outer office of the Commandant.