Deathstalker Rebellion (30 page)

There were also those who said he’d had the guards who let the woman slip past them arrested and then lowered into a vat of acid, feet first, one inch at a time. Few people had trouble believing the story. Cardinal Kassar was known for his cold rages and a vindictiveness that masqueraded as a thirst for justice. He’d risen rapidly through the ranks of the Church through leading vigorous crusades against heretics, which could be anyone who challenged his or the Church’s authority. He didn’t hesitate to accuse anyone who stood against the Church’s rising influence or who got in the way of his own personal ascent, even if they were friends or Family or previous allies. And as he rose through the ranks with unprecedented speed, people hurried to copy his zeal, if they knew what was good for them.

As a result, a useful way of dealing with one’s enemies was to accuse them of heresy. No proof was needed; often the accusation was enough. There were tribunals, where the accused could present their defense, but they cost money. Justice has never come cheap. Things got so bad some people tried to take out insurance against being accused, to cover possible legal fees, only to discover the premiums were more expensive than the fees. That was when the courtiers first realized no one was safe anymore. The Empress wasn’t slow to pick up on this and found the practice particularly useful for helping her keep her Court in order. If anyone started making trouble or getting above themselves, the word would go out and the unfortunate victim would be awakened in the early hours by the sound of holy boots kicking his door down. Soon anyone who even annoyed Lionstone had better have very strong ties with the Church, or a lot of money to hire lawyers. If you could find a lawyer brave enough to take on the Church these days.

The courtiers played the same dangerous game, denouncing each other every day for political, Family, or personal reasons, but they were taken less seriously. The truth quickly vanished in a morass of claims and counterclaims, until even the Church grew sick of it. So they just recorded everything, to be kept for future ammunition, as necessary.

Valentine Wolfe had been denounced so many times for all kinds of heresy that the Church lost count, including some that had previously been thought to be only theoretically possible, but the charges never stuck. No one doubted that he was an utter degenerate, with a drug habit strong enough to have killed half a dozen normal men, but as head of the Empire’s first Family, incredibly rich and powerful, with the Empress’s ear and support, he was for all practical purposes completely untouchable. Some wits made remarks about barge poles, but never when Valentine was around. Kassar still hadn’t given up on him, but for the time being they settled for conspicuously ignoring each other. The courtiers watched avidly. Everyone knew the situation couldn’t go on forever. It was just a question of which one made a misstep first; and then there’d be blood and hair on the walls.

People had been laying bets for months.

Valentine Wolfe stood a little alone in the heart of the crowd, as he always did. He was the head of the first Family on Golgotha, his every word a command for thousands of people, but he had no friends, or anyone who could say they were close to him. Valentine didn’t give a damn. He never had. He’d always found himself infinitely better company than any of those who surrounded him. And given his continuing experimentation with every drug under the sun, and a few that grew only in darkness, his inner world was more than enough to occupy him in his quiet moments.

Valentine was tall and slender and darkly delicate, like a fairy-tale demon prince, only more unreal. His face was long and thin and dyed a perfect white. Heavy mascara surrounded his overbright eyes, and a thickly painted crimson smile gave his face its only expression. Jet-black hair fell to his shoulders in thick curls and ringlets that had never known a comb. He wore dark clothes with the occasional splash of color, red for preference, and ignored the passing dictates of fashion with supreme indifference. In his time, he’d used every drug known to man and kept his private staff of chemists busy coming up with new ones. It was truly
said he’d never met a chemical he didn’t like. Anyone else who tried to ingest the quantity and variety of drugs Valentine had would undoubtably have been poisoned a dozen times over, his brains helplessly scrambled; but by some dark alchemical miracle, Valentine thrived and prospered. And if he saw the rest of the world rather differently than most people and had the occasional animated discussion with people who weren’t there, still, it didn’t seem to be slowing him down any. He remained sharp, ambitious, and extremely dangerous.

But even he knew he couldn’t go on forever as he was, without paying the price. He had the best doctors his considerable fortune could afford, and took frequent rests in his own personal regeneration machine, but his continuous extensive drug use combined with the never-ending pressure of his many intrigues to undo his precarious and hard-won self-control. He was burning himself up, inside and out, and his only response was to throw more chemicals on the fire. As a result, he was now so preternaturaliy sharp and tuned-in that he all but quivered where he stood. He was so incredibly aware that he could read body language as though it was the printed word, with everyone’s merest gesture shouting information at him. Plans and plots and pieces of whimsy flashed through his mind, sparking like lightning, come and gone in a moment. His body might be attending the Court, but his mind was here, there, and everywhere, all at once. Valentine rode the waves of his mind like a surfer, perfectly balanced, looking down from the giddy heights of an endless curl. He found it exhilarating, but he never lost control. Or if he did, no one seemed to notice.

He remained convinced that if he could just discover the right combination of drugs, he could acquire a perfect equilibrium between the effects he needed and the side effects he endured. A perfect never-ending high, soaring like a bird, limitless and free. But in the meantime, he found he needed increasingly large doses of each drug just to get the same desired effect; and he had to take more and more new drugs to counter the malicious effects of older drugs, whose remnants were still lurking in his system. As a result he was thinner than ever and much more intense, jolted from moment to moment by his chemical express, and he could no more comprehend a life without his little helpers than a life without oxygen. He was also taking specific short-lived drugs for
specific needs, making the necessary decisions from moment to moment. And this seemed a very good moment to increase his mental clarity. He had no friends at this Court and many enemies, and he didn’t trust his allies. It was therefore vital that he outthink them all at every turn.

He took out his silver pillbox, wiped a layer of frost from the lid, opened it, and chose a single tab. He pressed it against the side of his neck, hitting the main vein with practiced ease, and his crimson smile widened as the new drug surged through his bloodstream like a barreling train. His thoughts slammed into a new gear, sharp and clear and quicksilver fast. Everyone else seemed to be moving in slow motion. He felt comfortably warm, as though sitting in a great chair before a banked study fire, and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead, despite the bitter cold. His breathing deepened, and his heart thudded echoingly in his chest. He watched the patterns people made around him, every move a revelation. He reined his thoughts in, concentrating only on what he needed. The trouble with this particular drug was that it tended to make him a little paranoid. But that was acceptable, under the circumstances. At Lionstone’s Court they really were out to get you.

A short, fat figure approached him, scowling determinedly, and Valentine drew himself up, posing elegantly. Judging by his dogged stance, the Lord Gregor Shreck was set on business. Valentine didn’t mind. He could play that game, too. He smiled at the Shreck politely, but didn’t bow. He didn’t want to encourage the man. Gregor lurched to a halt before him, sniffed once, and then nodded stiffly.

“A moment of your time, Wolfe; it’s to our mutual advantage.”

“Well,” said Valentine pleasantly, “never let it be said that I turned down an advantage. How nice to see you again, dear Shreck. You’re looking well. Lost a little weight, perhaps?”

“Nothing I couldn’t afford to lose,” said Gregor, trying for a polite smile. It wasn’t particularly successful. He lacked the practice. “We have interests in common, Wolfe, not to mention enemies. Clan Chojiro is becoming dangerously influential at Court these days. With the Campbells thrown down and destroyed, Chojiros have prospered in their absence. Now, not content with threatening our business interests, they are seeking to undermine us here, too. In fact, I
would go so far as to say that Chojiros have become so prominent that neither you nor I could successfully deny them anything they really wanted. At least, not separately. But …”

“But together, in alliance, we could put them back in their place,” said Valentine, completing the sentence he could almost hear before it was said. His thoughts rocketed on, far ahead of the Shreck’s. Weighing which Clan would be of most potential use to him in the future and which the most dangerous. Chojiros were on the way up, and Shrecks were sinking. And the Chojiros at least knew something of honor, which was more than Gregor ever had. Valentine approved of honor. It made it so much easier to manipulate people who believed in it, or thought he did. Besides, he didn’t trust the Shreck. Never had.

“Thank you, Gregor,” he said only a second later, “but I’m really not interested in fighting any wars at present. Since my hostile takeover of Clan Campbell, I have more than enough to keep me occupied these days. Chojiros are an annoyance, nothing more. Thank you for your interest, Lord Shreck. Don’t let me keep you. I’m sure there are others simply dying for your company.”

Gregor Shreck stood fuming for a moment and then stomped away, kicking at the snow before him. He would have liked to have threatened the Wolfe, to make it clear standing on the sidelines could be dangerous, too, but in truth he had nothing to threaten Valentine with, and they both knew it. Valentine smiled slightly as he watched the small, squat figure plowing through the snow with furious energy. The Shreck would find no allies here at Court, and he’d never had any friends. There was always the Church, of course. Gregor had been courting them furiously just recently. But the Church would be Valentine’s enemy anyway.

He looked around to see if anyone had been watching his brief encounter with the Shreck, but they were all avoiding his eye. Of course they’d been watching. They all wanted something from him. Everyone did. Valentine shrugged. He had more important things to think about. Of late his intelligence people buried in the underground had been bringing him more and more reports of apparent inhuman abilities among the new rebels, exploits that could not be accounted for by esper talents. Examples of strength and abilities beyond anything ever seen before. It was all rumor and gossip,
of course, but if there was a process that could produce abilities greater than esp, Valentine wanted it for himself. He was still chasing the esper drug, with little success. His efforts had been made much more difficult since his enforced divorce from the underground, but he’d taken care to seed the rebel forces with his own people some time in advance, just in case. Pity about the underground. They’d had access to all kinds of unusual and forbidden practices. But he’d become too public now to risk links like that.

The Lord High Dram, in his persona as the man called Hood, had worked his way into the highest levels of the clone and esper underground before he revealed his true identity—which meant he knew all about Valentine’s involvement. Valentine had never cared a damn for the underground’s politics or causes; he’d only been interested in alternative routes to power and the drug that could reportedly make an esper out of anyone. But he felt he might have a hard time convincing Lionstone of that. So when Hood was revealed as Dram, Valentine moved quickly to sever all his links with the underground and disposed of anything or anyone that could directly connect him with the rebels. The people he’d seeded in the underground didn’t matter. They didn’t know who they were reporting to, and as long as the money kept coming, they didn’t ask questions. So Valentine sat back and waited for Dram to make his move, confident he could defy the man to prove anything. Even the Warrior Prime’s word wouldn’t be enough on its own to convict the head of the first Family in the Empire. Rank has its privileges, after all.

However, Dram never said a word. Valentine waited, armed and prepared for any attack, but none came, and slowly Valentine came to believe that he was safe, for the moment. Perhaps the Empress had decided it wasn’t in the Empire’s interest to bring down the man she depended on to provide her with the new stardrive. Or perhaps the information was being kept in reserve, as a weapon to use against him at some future time. Lionstone had always been one to take the long view.

Except … there was a delicious rumor going around of late that the Lord High Dram was dead. He hadn’t been seen at Court for ages. His only recent appearances had been as a head and shoulders on a viewscreen, and that could have been anyone, behind a digital mask. The word was, Dram
had been sent on an extremely secret mission, got his head handed to him, and came home in a box. No one had any proof, as yet, but Valentine had heard the rumor in so many places and from so many sources, some surprisingly high up, that he couldn’t help feeling there had to be something in it.

And if Dram was dead, there was a good chance his proof of Valentine’s treason died with him. Which meant he could go back to the underground. If he wanted to. Valentine pursed his scarlet mouth. With all that had happened to him of late, he no longer needed the underground as a route to power. He was doing perfectly well on his own. And his agents stood a much better chance of discovering the source of the esper drug than he ever would. No, he didn’t need the rebels anymore. He didn’t need anyone. And he had other, more important, worries to concern him.