Songmaster (23 page)

Mikal sat staring into the tire, remembering the first man he had ever killed. Mikal had been a mere child, only ten, younger than Ansset—no. Mustn’t think of Ansset.

Only ten, and upstairs asleep. It was in the years of terror on the worlds of the Helping Walk, and that night it was their turn. There was no knock on the door, no sound outside, just the crash of the door blowing in, the scream of Mikal’s mother, who had not yet gone to bed, the shriek of Mikal’s sister as she awakened across the small room from him. Mikal had not had to wonder what it was. He was only ten, but such things could not be kept from children in those years, and he had seen the women’s corpses, taken apart and strewn along the street; had seen the male genitals nailed to the walls as the corpse of the man who had owned them leaned below them, leering madly at the fire that had turned his bowels to ashes.

The marauders traveled in small groups, and were said to be irresistible, but Mikal knew where the hunting gun was kept and how to aim it true. He found it in his parents’ room, loaded it carefully while his mother kept on screaming downstairs, and then waited patiently while two sets of footsteps came up the stairs. He would have only one shot, but if he chose the right moment, it would be enough—the gun was strong enough to shove a charge through one man and kill another behind him.

The men loomed at the top of the stairs. Mikal had no angst at the thought of killing. He fired. The recoil of the gun knocked him down. When he got up, the two men were gone, having tumbled down the stairs. Still his poise did not leave him. He loaded again, then walked carefully to the top of the stairs. At the bottom, two men knelt over the corpses, then looked up. If Mikal had hesitated, they would have killed him—lasers are quicker than any projectile, and these men knew how to use them. But Mikal did not hesitate. He fired again, and this time held his ground against the recoil, watching as the two men dropped from the explosion as the shell hit one man in the head. It was a lucky shot—Mikal had been aiming for the other man’s belly. It made no difference. Both were dead.

Mikal did not know how he would get down the stairs under fire to finish off the rest, but he intended to try. It turned out that he didn’t need to. His father was being held, forced to watch as the second man began raping his wife. When four of the marauders were suddenly dead, Mikal’s father didn’t hesitate to tell the other three, “You haven’t got a chance. There are four of them upstairs and another dozen outside.”

They believed him; but they were marauders, and so they slit his throat to the bone, and stabbed Mikal’s mother eight times, and only then did they turn their lasers on themselves, knowing that there would be no mercy if they surrendered, not even a trial, just the brief ceremony of tearing them to pieces. Mikal’s father died even as they did. But Mikal’s mother lived. And at the age of ten Mikal became something of a hero. He organized the villages into a strong resisting force, and when the word spread that no marauders could get into that village, other villages pleaded with Mikal to lead them, too, though he was just a child. By the age of fifteen, he had forced the marauders to accept a treaty that, in essence, kept them from landing on Mikal’s planet, and over the next few years Mikal taught them that he had the power and the will to enforce it.

Yet in the moments when he first came downstairs and saw the four men he had killed, saw his father gouting blood through the gaping smile in his throat, saw three charred corpses already stinking of half-cooked meat, saw his mother lying naked on the floor with a knife in her breast, he had felt an agony that powered all his actions ever since. Even remembering that night left him sweating, more than a century later. And at first it had been hate that propelled him, forced him to take a fleet out to the marauders’ own worlds and subdue them, brought him to be the head of a strong, tough group of men all older than him and willing to follow him to hell.

But somewhere along the way the hate had left him. Not until after they had finally succeeded in killing his mother with poison, decades after she had survived the knives—he had hated then, surely. Perhaps it was gradual, as the night of death faded into memory and he began to feel the responsibility of caring for the billions of people who depended on him for law, for peace, for protection. Somewhere along the way his goals had changed. He was no longer out to punish the wicked, as he had once thought his mission in life to be. Now he was out to establish peace throughout the galaxy, to protect mankind from mankind, even though it meant more bloody war to force the quarreling worlds and nations and leagues of worlds to accept what they all claimed to want. An end to death in battle.

I did it, Mikal told himself, staring into the flames. I did it.

And yet not well enough. Because after all of this a boy had to stand there tonight with blood on his hands, looking at the corpses of the men he had killed. I started all this so that no boy would ever have to do that again.

Mikal felt a pain inside himself that he could not bear. He put his hand into the fire until the pain of his body forced the pain of his heart to recede. Then he wrapped the hand, salved it, and wondered why inward wounds could not be so easily healed.

“Songbird,” Riktors Ashen said, “it seems that someone has taught you new songs.”

Ansset stood among the guards, who all held lasers trained on him. Control kept him from showing any emotion at all, though he longed to cry out with the agony that tore at him inside. My walls are deep, but can they hold this? he wondered, and inside his head he heard, faintly, a voice singing to him. It was Esste’s voice, and she sang the love song, and that was what allowed him to contain the guilt and the grief and the fear and keep Control.

“You must have studied under a master,” Riktors said.

“I never,” Ansset started, and then realized that he could not keep on speaking, not and keep Control.

“Don’t torture the boy, Captain,” said Mikal from where he sat in a corner of the council room.

The Chamberlain launched into his
pro forma
resignation. “I should have examined the boy’s muscle structure and realized what new skills he had been given. I submit my resignation. I beg you to take my life.”

The Chamberlain must be even more worried than usual, Ansset realized, for he had prostrated himself in front of the emperor.

“Shut up and get up,” Mikal said. The Chamberlain arose with his face gray. Mikal had not followed the ritual. The Chamberlain’s life was still on the line.

“Apparently,” Mikal said, “we’ve broken through some of the barriers laid in my Songbird’s mind. Let’s see how many.”

Ansset stood watching as Riktors took a packet off the table and spread pictures for Ansset to look at. Ansset looked at the first one and felt sick. He did not know why they were making him look until he saw the third one and gasped, despite Control.

“You know this one,” Riktors said.

Ansset nodded dumbly.

“Point to the ones you know.”

So Ansset pointed to nearly half of them, and Riktors checked them against a list he held in his hands, and when Ansset was through and turned away (slowly, slowly, because the guards with the lasers were nervous), Riktors smiled grimly at Mikal.

“He picked every single one kidnapped and murdered after he himself was kidnapped. There was a connection after all.”

“I killed them,” Ansset said, and his voice was not calm. It shook as no one in the palace had ever heard it shake before. Mikal looked at him, but said nothing, gave no sign of sympathy. “They had me practice on them,” Ansset finished.

“Who had you practice?” Riktors demanded.

“They! The voices—from the box.” Ansset struggled to hold onto the memory that had been hidden from him by the block. Now he knew why the block had been so strong—he could not have borne knowing what was hidden in his mind. But now it was in the open, and he had to bear it, at least long enough to tell. He had to tell, though he longed to let the block slide back to hide these memories forever.

“What box?” Riktors would not let up.

“The box. A wooden box. Maybe a receiver, maybe a recording. I don’t know.”

“Did you know the voice?”

“Voices. Never the same. Not even for the same sentence. The voices changed for every word. I could never find any songs in them.”

Ansset kept seeing the faces of the bound men he was told to maim and then kill. He remembered that though he cried out against it, he could not resist, could not stop himself.

“How did they force you to do it?” Riktors asked, and though his voice was soft, the questions were insistent, had to be answered.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. There were words, and then I had to.”

“What words?”

“I don’t know! I never knew!” And Ansset began to cry.

Mikal spoke softly. “Who taught you to kill that way?”

“A man. I never knew his name. On the last day he was tied where the others had been. The voices made me kill him.” Ansset struggled with the words, the struggle made harder by the realization that this time, when he had killed his teacher, he had not had to be forced. He had killed because he hated the man. “I murdered him.”

“Nonsense,” the Chamberlain said, trying to sound sympathetic. “You were a tool.”

“I told you to shut up,” Mikal said curtly. “Can you remember anything else, my son?”

Ansset nodded, took a breath, knowing that though he had lost the illusion of Control, still it was the walls of Control that kept him from screaming, from charging a guard and dying in the welcome flame of a laser. “I killed Master, and all of the crew that was there. Some were missing. The ones I recognized from the pictures from Eire. And Husk. But I killed all the rest, they were all there in the room with the table, and all alone I killed them. They fought me as hard as they could, all except Master, who just stood there like he couldn’t believe that I could be doing what he saw me do. Maybe they never knew what it was I was learning to do on deck.”

“And then?”

“And then when they were all dead I heard footsteps above me on the deck.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. The box told me to lie down on my stomach, and I did, and the box told me to close my eyes, and I did, and I couldn’t open them. Then footsteps down the stairs and a slap on my arm and I woke up walking down a street.”

Everyone was silent then, for a few moments. It was the Chamberlain who finally spoke first. “My Lord, it must have been the Songbird’s great love for you that broke through the barriers, despite the fact that the Captain was already dead—”

“Chamberlain!” Mikal interrupted. “Your life is over if you speak again before I address you.” He turned to Riktors Ashen. “Captain, I want to know how those Kinshasans got past your guard.”

Riktors Ashen made no attempt to excuse himself. “The guards at the door were my men, and they gave them a routine check, without any effort to investigate the possibility of unusual weapons in those unusual headdresses. They’ve been replaced with more careful men, and the ones who let them by are in prison, waiting for your pleasure.”

“My pleasure,” said Mikal, “will be a long time coming.”

Ansset was regaining Control. He listened to the songs in Riktors Ashen’s voice and marvelled at the man’s confidence. It was as if none of this could touch Riktors Ashen. He knew he was not at fault, knew that he would not be punished, knew that all would turn out well. His confidence was infectious, and Ansset felt just a little better.

Mikal gave clear orders to his Captain. “There will be a rigorous investigation of Kinshasa. Find any and every link between the Kinshasan assassination attempt and the manipulation of Ansset. Every member of the conspiracy is to be treated as a traitor. All the rest of the Kinshasans are to be deported to a world with an unpleasant climate, and every building in Kinshasa is to be destroyed and removed and every field and orchard and animal is to be stripped. I want every bit of it on holo, to be distributed throughout the empire.”

Riktors bowed his head.

Then Mikal turned to the Chamberlain, who looked petrified with fear, though he still clung to his dignity.

“Chamberlain, what would you recommend that I do with my Songbird?”

The Chamberlain was back to being careful. “My Lord it is not a matter to which I have given thought. The disposition of your Songbird is not a matter on which I feel it proper to advise you.”

“Very carefully said, my dear Chamberlain.”

Ansset struggled to keep Control as he listened to their discussion of what should be done with him. Mikal raised his hand in the gesture that, by ritual, spared the Chamberlain’s life. The Chamberlain’s relief was visible, and at another time Ansset would have laughed; but now there was no laughter in him, and he knew that his own relief would not come so easily as it had come to the Chamberlain.

“My Lord,” Ansset said, when the conversation paused. “I beg you to put me to death.”

“Dammit, Ansset, I’m sick of rituals,” Mikal said.

“This is no ritual,” Ansset said, his voice tired and husky from misuse. “And this is no song, Father Mikal. I’m a danger to you.”

“I noticed,” Mikal said dryly. Then he turned back to the Chamberlain. “Have Ansset’s possessions put together and ready for travel.”

“I have no possessions,” Ansset said.

Mikal looked at him in surprise.

“I’ve never owned anything,” Ansset said.

Mikal shrugged, spoke again to the Chamberlain. “Inform the Songhouse that Ansset is returning. Tell them that he has performed beautifully, and I have marred him by bringing him to my court. Tell them that they will be paid four times what we agreed to before, and that it doesn’t begin to compensate them for the beauty of their gift to me or to the damage that I did to it. See to it. See to it all.”

Then Mikal turned to go. Ansset could not bear to see Mikal leave like that, turning his back and walking out without so much as a farewell. “Father Mikal,” Ansset called out. Or rather, he meant to call out. But the words came out softly. They were a song, and Ansset realized that he had sung the first notes of the love song. It was all the good-bye he’d be able to give.

Mikal left without giving any sign that he heard.