Songmaster (21 page)

As prisons went, there had been worse. It was just a cell without a door—at least on the inside. And while there was no furniture, the floor yielded as comfortably as the floor in Mikal’s private room.

It was hard not to be bitter, however. The Captain sat leaning on a wall, naked so that he couldn’t harm himself with his clothing. He was more than sixty years old, and for four years had been in charge of all the emperor’s fleets, coordinating thousands of ships across the galaxy. And then to get caught up in this silly palace intrigue, to be the scapegoat—

The Chamberlain had plotted it, of course. Always the Chamberlain. But how could he prove his innocence without undergoing hypnosis; and who would conduct that operation, if not the Chamberlain? Besides, the Captain knew what no one else alive did—that while a serious probe into his mind would not prove that he was at all involved in kidnapping Ansset, it would uncover other things, earlier things, any one of which could destroy his reputation, all of which together would result in his death as surely as if he had captured Ansset himself.

Forty years of unshakable loyalty, and now, when I’m innocent, my old crimes stop me from forcing the issue. He ran his hands along his aging thighs as he sat leaning against a wall. The muscles were still there, but his legs felt as if the skin were coming loose, sagging away. A man should live to be a hundred and twenty in this world, he thought. I won’t have had much more than half that.

What had prompted them to imprison him? What had he done that was suspicious? Or had there been anything at all?

There must have been something. Mikal was not a tyrant; he ruled by law, even if he was all powerful. Had he talked to the wrong people too often? Had he been in the wrong cities at the wrong time? Whoever the real traitors were, he was sure the case they had set up against him looked plausible.

Abruptly the lights dimmed to half strength. He knew enough about the prison from the other end of things to know that meant darkness in about ten minutes. Night, then, and sleep, if he
could
sleep.

He lay down, rested his arm across his eyes, and knew that the fluttering in his stomach would be irresistible. He wouldn’t sleep tonight. He kept thinking—morbidly let himself think, because he had too much courage to hide from his own imagination—kept thinking about the way he would die. Mikal was a great man, but he was not kind to traitors. They were taken apart, piece by piece, as the holos recorded the death agony to be broadcast on every planet. Or perhaps they would only claim he was peripherally involved, in which case his agony could be more private, and less prolonged. But it wasn’t the pain that frightened him—he had lost his left arm twice, not two years apart, and he knew that he could bear pain reasonably well. It was knowing that all the men he had ever commanded would think of him from then on as a traitor, dying in utter disgrace.

That was what he could not bear. Mikal’s empire had been created by soldiers with fanatic loyalty and love of honor, and that tradition continued. He remembered the first time he had been in command of a ship. It was at the rebellion of Quenzee, and his cruiser had been surprised on planet. He had had the agonizing choice of lifting the cruiser immediately, before it could be damaged, or waiting to try to save some of his detachment of men. He opted for the cruiser, because if he waited, it would mean nothing at all would be saved for the empire. But the panicked cries of
Wait, Wait
rang in his ears long after the radio was too far to hear them. He had been commended, though they didn’t give him the medal for months because he would have found a way to kill himself with it.

I thought so easily of suicide then, he remembered. Now, when it would really be useful, it is forever out of reach.

I will only be paying for my crimes. They don’t realize it, but even though they think they’re setting up an innocent man, I deserve exactly the penalty I’m getting.

He remembered—

And the lights went out—

He tried to sleep and dream, but still he remembered. And remembered. And in every dream saw her face. No name. He had never known her name—it was part of their protection, because if a name was never known, it could never be found by the cleverest probe, no matter how hard he tried. But her face—blacker than his own, as if she had pure blood descending from the most isolated part of Africa, and her smile, though rare, so bright that the very memory brought tears to his eyes and made his head swim. She was supposed to be the real assassin. And the night before they had planned to kill the prefect, she had brought him to her house. Her parents, who knew nothing, were asleep in the back; she had given herself to him twice before he finally realized that this was more than just release of tension before a difficult mission. She really loved him, he was sure of it, and so he whispered his name into her ear.

“What was that?” she asked.

“My name,” he answered, and her face looked as if she was in great pain.

“Why did you tell me?”

“Because,” he had whispered as she ran her fingers up his back, “I trust you.” She had groaned under the burden of that trust—or perhaps in the last throes of sexual ecstasy. Whatever. He would never know. As he left, she whispered to him at the door, “Meet me at nine o’clock in the morning, meet me by the statue of Horus in Flant Fisway.”

And he had waited by the statue for two hours, then went looking for her and found her house surrounded by police. And the houses of two other conspirators, and he knew that they had been betrayed. At first he thought, had let himself think that perhaps
she
had betrayed them, and it was to save his life that she asked him to meet her at the time she knew the police would come. Either way, though, even if she was innocent, he read in the papers that she had killed herself as the police came into her house, had blasted her head off with an old-fashioned bullet pistol right in front of her parents as they sat in the living room wondering why the police were coming to the door. Even if she had betrayed the group, she had refused to betray him—knowing his name, she had preferred death to the possibility of being forced to reveal it.

Scant comfort. He had killed the prefect himself, then left the planet he had been born on and never returned. Spent a few years, until he was twenty, trying to join rebellions or foment rebellions or even uncover some serious discontent somewhere in Mikal’s not-very-old empire. But gradually he had come to realize that not that many people longed for independence. Life under Mikal was better than life had ever been before. And as he learned that, he began to understand what it was that Mikal had achieved.

And he enlisted, and used his talents to rise in the military until he was Mikal’s most trusted lieutenant, Captain of the guard. All for nothing. All for nothing because of an ambitious civil servant who was having him die, not with honor, as he had dreamed, but in terrible disgrace.

I deserve that, too, he thought. Because I told her my name. All my fault, because I told her my name.

He had been dozing, because the sudden draft of cooler air startled him into wakefulness. Had they come for him? But no—they would have turned on a light. And there was no light, not even in the hall, if his impression was right and the door was open.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Shhh,” came the answer. “Captain?”

“Yes.” The Captain struggled to remember the voice. “Who are you?”

“You don’t know me. I’m just a soldier. You don’t know me. But I know you, Captain. I brought you something.” And the Captain felt a hand grope along his body until it found his arm, his hand, and pressed into it a slap with a syringe mounted on it.

“What is it?”

“Honor,” said the soldier. The voice was very young.

“Why?”

“You couldn’t have betrayed Mikal. But they’ll get you, I know it. And make you die—as a traitor. So if you want it—honor.”

And then the touch of wind as the soldier left in the darkness; the gathering heat as the door closed and the breeze stopped. The Captain held death in his hand. But he hadn’t much time. The soldier was brave and clever, but the prison security system would soon alert the guards—had probably already alerted them—that someone had broken in. Perhaps they were already coming for him.

What if I actually
do
prove my innocence, he wondered. Why die now, when I might be exonerated and live the rest of my life?

But he remembered what the Chamberlain’s drugs and questions would uncover, and he could see only her black, black face in his mind as he slapped the stick on his stomach, hard, and the impact broke the seal and allowed the chemicals to open his skin to the poison in the syringe. Normally he would have been counting seconds, to take away the drug when the proper dose had been achieved, but this time the only proper dose was everything the syringe might contain.

He was still holding the slap to his stomach when the lights dazzled on and the door opened and guards rushed in, pulled the syringe off his stomach and out of his hand, and started picking him up to rush him out of the cell. “Too late,” he said weakly, but they carried him just the same, half-dragged him down a corridor. The Captain’s limbs were completely dead; he recognized the poison and knew that this was a sign that death could not be delayed, no matter what the treatment. They passed through another door, and there he saw the back of a young soldier being forced by three others into an examination room. “Thank you,” the Captain tried to say to the boy, but he could not make enough sound to be heard over the footfalls and the rushing of uniforms through the halls.

They laid him on a table and the doctor leaned over him, shook his head, said it was too late.

“Try anyway!” cried a voice that the Captain dimly recognized as the Chamberlain’s.

“Chamberlain,” the Captain whispered.

“Yes, you bastard!” said the Chamberlain, his voice a study in anguish.

“Tell Mikal that my death frees more plotters than it kills.”

“Do you think he doesn’t know it?”

“And tell him—tell him—”

The Chamberlain leaned closer, but the Captain died not knowing if he had been able to give his last message to Mikal before he was silenced forever.