Nightlord: Orb (68 page)

The curves did tend to give the city an alien appearance, broken by the sense of familiarity.  It was grace embodied in concrete.  Strange, yet inevitable.  I wonder what my pet rock would think of it.

The Imperial Palace was a huge, sprawling structure, done almost entirely in cut stone, concrete, and ceramic.  Four great, rectangular wings emerged, one in each cardinal direction, from a massive, hemispherical center.  Red tile formed a shallow-pitched roof on the emerging wings, while the center was simple and smooth.  A frieze of heroic figures and monsters chased itself around the top of the walls, under the eaves of the wings, while the central section remained unmarked.  Broad courtyards of flagstone filled in the spaces between the wings.

The place was more than merely standing; it was in excellent shape.  Even the wooden portions of the structure were sound.  The courtyard had a weed problem and some stones were starting to tilt, but the building itself was practically untouched.

Someone had done maintenance on it.  Someone might still be doing maintenance on it.

“What do you think?” I asked, glancing up and behind me.  “Do we go in?”

“From the look of the place, someone still lives here,” Mary said, eyeing the place.  “Maybe we should knock.  Or is there a doorbell?”

“I don’t think the Emperor had many unexpected guests.  I’d say they used a servant as a doorbell.”

“Shout?”

“We could,” I admitted, looking the place over.  “I don’t feel right making noise in this place.”

Mary took a breath and cut loose with a full-scale bellow:

“Hey!  Anybody home?”

I winced as the echoes wandered from palace walls, down city streets, and limped home again.  Mary crouched as I winced and half-hugged me from behind.

“Sorry about that.  I don’t have the same reverence for the dead past.  The stones won’t care.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I grumped.  She kissed me on the ear.

“There.  I’m sorry.  Feel better?”

“Only in the sense the universe blossomed into a pleasant place.”

Mary chuckled and slid down one side of Bronze.

“Coming?”

Bronze flicked an ear at me, clearly telling me to go ahead.  I patted her neck and dismounted.

We went up a dozen broad, shallow steps to reach the pillared portico and the heavy bronze doors in the north wing of the Palace.  The only ways in seemed to be the doors at the end of the wings.  The doors in front of us were covered in scenes from the history of the Empire, most of which I failed to recognize.  A couple were slightly familiar, but I couldn’t recall the details.  Maybe if I did a search in my study.  They were also untarnished, even polished, which made me look at Bronze again.

The doors and Bronze didn’t have the same color.  Bronze was more coppery-gold than bronze-colored.  Originally, yes, she was bronze.  What’s she made of, now?  An alloy of lots of different metals, obviously; I have no idea what to call it.  I’m not about to change her name to “Alloy,” but I’m curious.

The doors opened at a gentle push.  Why would they be locked?  Why should they be locked?  It was impressive, though.  I didn’t think doors that massive could be so well-balanced.  They must have weighed tons.  Then again, Karvalen has rock doors that pivot.  Then again again, these were on hinges, not pivoting around a central balance point.  Still impressive.

Inside, the moonlight showed brightly polished floors; I’d hate to try and take a corner while wearing socks.  The floor was also covered with intricate tile-work—no scenes, but lots of abstract geometrical designs.  Along the walls, a dozen or more big statues stood in alcoves.  Another dozen or so, done on a human-sized scale, were arrayed inside the door.  They faced away from us, as though the group of them entered before we did.  A few more of these lay on the floor in various states of broken.

Mary started to go in, but I laid a hand on her arm.

“What?”

“Those broken statues,” I told her, nodding at them.  “They’re the first signs of disrepair we’ve seen.”

“And?”

“And the rest of the group aren’t mounted on anything.  They’re free-standing.”

“Unlike the big ones in the niches,” she added, now frowning.  “Why?”

“Exactly.  Never underestimate the value of paranoia in a world of magic or technology.”

I shifted my vision into the magical spectrum and regarded the place more carefully.  There was no major spell to be seen, although a number of minor ones were still about—cleaning and polishing, mostly.

Spells decay over time.  You put energy in, the spell runs until the energy runs out, and it collapses.  I mentioned as much to Mary, who then switched to magical seeing.  She frowned with me, but prettier.

“So,” she pondered, slowly, “these either started with a battery bigger than the Brisbane reactors…”

“Look again.  They don’t have the capacity.  These weren’t built to hold much of a charge.  They couldn’t possibly have a duration longer than… say, a week?  Probably less.”

“…or they were put here recently.”

“I’d say so.”

“So someone does live here,” she stated.

“That’d be my guess.”

“Do we shout again?” she asked.  “What’s the protocol for housebreaking around here?  It’s your world; I’m the tourist.”

“It’s not my world; I just live here.”

“You’re a king in this world?”

“Well, yes,” I admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I own the whole world.”

“Maybe you should,” she suggested.

“Bite your tongue!”

“You do it; that’ll be more fun.”

“Not with my teeth, it won’t.”

“You underestimate me.”

“Maybe later.  Weirdo.”

“But a fun weirdo?”

“Always.”

“So, do we go in guns blazing?”

“Let’s see if we can make friends, first.  Although being ready for trouble might not be a bad idea.”

“I brought extra ammo.”

She drew a pistol and a long knife, then pressed back against the doorframe.  I stepped over the threshold and waited.  After a moment, I prompted anyone or anything that might be around by saying, “Hello?”  Technically, I called out
sallev
, (sah-
lev
)
which is a Rethven corruption of the old Imperial
salleve
(sahl-
eve
).  Recognizing my mistake, I tried it both ways.

A statue against the wall—ten feet tall, sculpted like an Hellenic wrestler—activated.  Magic flickered over it, flared to life, and the statue glowed with power.  Nice trick.  I wouldn’t have noticed the enchantment in sleep-mode without an up-close examination.  It lumbered over from its niche to stand in front of the assembled lesser statues.  It spoke in the old Imperial tongue.

“Who comes to the Palace?”  The voice sounded gentle and cultured, with a warmly intimate feel.  It was also three times louder than a normal speaking voice.  I was pretty sure it was a recording.  The lines and angles of the enchantment were complicated, but still, fundamentally, a wind-up toy, not a form of life.

Well, what does one do when the automated doorman asks who you are?

“Halar, from
Rhiatha’Eyn,
with Mary, his consort.”

“Enter, travelers, and be welcome.”  The statue lumbered to its niche and returned to immobility.  The enchantment shut down and it appeared to be any other mundane statue.  Impressive spellmanship.

I turned to say something to Mary; she was covering the statue with her gun.  Her eyes were wide and staring, but she didn’t tremble.

“Come on in,” I told her, in English.  “It’s okay.  I think the bouncer cleared us.”

“Bronze is one thing,” she said, sliding gracefully next to me, gun still trained on the statue, “but that… Is that
normal
for around here?”

“I don’t know about normal, but not unusual.”

“Is it too late to go home?”

“Nope.  Do you want to?”

“No, I just want to know I can.”

“Give me a day or two of warning.  Gate-work isn’t easy.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”  She put her knife away and held my hand—my left, so I could draw Firebrand easily.  She kept her gun out.

We walked around the lesser statues.  I wondered what they were for and why they were there.  A makeshift barricade?  It would slow invaders slightly.  Maybe a clumsy alarm?  They weren’t too stable.  I didn’t see any spells on them, not even the cleaning or polishing spells scattered around the rest of the place.

It was quite definitely a palace.  It was big and impressive, done by people who knew how to do big and impressive.  Wide halls, high ceilings, bits of gold and gems here and there for accents, and the occasional mural made me think in terms of Versailles rather than Rome.  Nero’s pleasure palace, maybe?  Perhaps this was what Rome might have done in trying to copy Versailles.  All it lacked was a wall of mirrors.

We wandered through the place like invading tourists.  That is, we walked quietly while looking all around, we stopped at corners to check our turns before going around them, we kept an eye on our rear, and we made sure we knew our way out if we had to leave with frantic haste.

In the course of our wandering, we found the maintenance crew.  They weren’t human, or even alive.  They were a pair of tall, spindly constructs made of some springy metal.  All their surfaces and edges were rounded and polished smooth.  They put me in mind of skeletons, only made of some shiny metal and stretched about fifty percent.  Maybe a modern art display based on skeletons done in chrome and stainless steel.  They clicked slightly as they moved, clacked softly as they walked delicately across the floor.

One of them found a mural where the repair spell had failed.  It reached out with one arm-like appendage, there was a surge, and a fresh repair spell enveloped the mural.

“That’s the janitor?” Mary asked.

“I think you’re right.”

“What spell did it put on the wall?”

“Repair spell.  Pretty good one, too.  Not too powerful, but extremely fine work.  My guess is it’s not for major repairs.  It might do well at helping to restore an old painting, though, or at offsetting the gradual effects of time and wear.  It looks to me as though it might be directly affecting entropy in some way, which is—”

“—not my area of interest,” Mary interrupted.  “Janitors?”

“Janitors,” I agreed.

“Are they… alive?”

“I don’t think so.  They look like constructs.  Look at the magical structure.”

Mary stared at them, brows drawn together.

“They don’t look anything like Bronze.  On the inside, I mean.  They’re all… lines and angles.  Bronze is more cloudy.  Foamy.”

“She’s a special case.  She’s a living entity in a metallic body.  These are automatons.  Think of Bronze as a… a consciousness in a machine.  These are mindless robots, programmed to do specific jobs.”

“Is one of those jobs ejecting people who mess with them?”

“Possibly,” I allowed.  “It’s also possible every statue we’ve passed is like the doorman, only waiting until we do something unpleasant before throwing us out.”

“There are hundreds of the things!” she whispered, fiercely.

“I know.  Let’s be on our best behavior.”

“You could have told me sooner!”

“Would that make you run faster if they started to move?”

Mary gave me a dirty look.

“Remind me to stab you in the heart some night,” she suggested.

“Okay.  Mind if I apologize, first?”

“Spoilsport.”

We continued our impromptu tour.  The ground floor was obviously devoted to Imperial business.  There were rooms for meetings, conferences, speeches, state dinners, all that stuff, but the majority of the rooms struck me as being offices.  Small rooms for clerks, managers, or functionaries.  Bureaucracy invades every government, apparently.  Maybe Max Weber was right.

The ultimate office, of course, was the throne room, complete with a fancy, gilded chair.  The round back and the stylized sun-rays coming out of it led me to believe Sparky might have had a hand in its design.  Mary examined it carefully, mostly paying attention to the jumbo-sized golden topaz in the center of the design and the ruby chips along some of the gold rays.

“Don’t,” I suggested.

“I’m only looking.  Can’t a girl look?”

“Yes, but you’re an international jewel thief, too.”

“Not anymore.  But I could be an interuniversal jewel thief.”

“Not tonight, please.”

“A girl can dream,” she pointed out.  “Am I seeing a spell on this, or an enchantment?”

I examined it with her.  Her confusion was understandable.  The enchantments in the chair had a sleep-mode, much like the one in the doorman-bouncer statue.  They were dormant, almost hidden.  When I had time to go paging through the leftover memories of Zirafel’s digested ghosts, that was a technique I wanted to learn.