Warlord (5 page)

All of two hundred meters long and fifty high; the ceiling was a mosaic, a wheeling galaxy of stars against indigo night, with the head and shoulders of the Spirit of Man looming above it. Much like the one in the Temple, and like that it always gave you a slight creeping sensation between the shoulderblades, as if the huge dark eyes were following you and looking into your soul. The floor was tessellated marble, and the walls point-topped windows filled with stained glass, mostly Scriptural scenes—computers, spaceships lifting off—or gruesome martyrdoms, or the triumphs of the Governors. A blare of trumpets, and the mechanical men spaced at intervals along the walls came to attention from parade rest, slapping the replica lasers with their left hands as they brought them to the salute. There was a hiss and whir from the compressed-air machinery of the automatons, and the arc lights along the angle of ceiling and wall popped and flared, shedding an actinic blue light and the occasional spark. The crowd moaned, bowing in unison before the awesome technology of the ancients.

Raj increased his pace slightly, the gold-alloy spurs on his high boots jingling. He was in full dress fig
for this, and as always it made him feel like a dancer in a revue down on Carcossa Street; skin-tight crimson pants with gold piping down the seams, codpiece, jewelled saber-belt and tooled pistol holster, a tache so long and elaborate that he had to hold the scabbard of his sword in his left hand to keep it from dragging on the floor. The blue jacket hugged his shoulders so tightly he could feel the tickle of the epaulets, and the split tails nearly reached his ankles.

The horseshoe shaped end of the Hall was focused on the Chair, standing alone and untenanted at the top of a semicircular flight of white marble stairs. Vice-Governor Barholm was sitting in his usual chair of state on one of the lower steps; to either side were the Chiefs of Department at their inlaid desks. The ceremonial view-screens in each were symbols as well, the actual paperwork would be handled by the crowds of flunkies and aides who hovered at their rear.

Raj went down on one knee, bowing deeply: all that was necessary, considering Barholm's official status and his own. The Vice-Governor's long robe was so heavy with embroidery and jewelwork that it was probably as uncomfortable as Raj's uniform, even on a cool spring day like this. His face showed as little of that as did the other nine Guards who stood behind the bureaucrats. Or the bureaucrats themselves; this was part of the ritual of power, after all.

"Rise, Whitehall of Hillchapel," Barholm said. He was more typical of the Descott Hills than Raj himself, lacking the younger man's rangy height; stocky, with a torso like a brick, a heavy-muscled man who moved with a tensile quickness despite a sedentary life. But his accent was pure East Residence, smooth as a hired rhetor's.

Raj came to his feet, saluted smartly with his free hand and buckled on the plumed helmet; at least on his head it didn't tickle his nose the way it did under one arm. He settled to parade rest beside Hemlt Stanson, the Guardsman next in seniority. Their station was directly behind the Vice-Governor, and they rested their palms on the butts of their pistols. Not that they expected trouble, a very expert crew of chamberlains inspected everyone before they were allowed this far into the Palace. For that matter, there were two dozen
very
expert riflemen with 'scope-sighted weapons behind various pieces of ornamental grillwork. The status of Guard did not appear on any muster roll, but it could count for a good deal more than formal military rank. The Guards were all well-born, well-connected; fighting men who could be relied on for anything that needed doing.

a need shared by both vice-governor barholm and myself,
Center observed,
someday inquire as to the meaning of the term "bucellari." 
 

Raj managed not to jump, and subvocalized:
be careful, you might distract me
.
Consciously, he schooled his mind to acceptance; numinous awe was all very well for church, but he had work to do in this world, that was why the angel had chosen him.
Act as if everything was normal
,
he told himself.
Act well enough, and you'll grow to believe it in your gut as well as your head
.

Silence, while the ushers shepherded forward the first batch. Three of them, two men and a woman in expensive but unfashionably up-country clothes, without the hired cicerone who could have shown them how to
really
penetrate court ritual. They began to go down in the full prostration, to be halted by the hissed outrage of the usher; that was for the Governor alone. Raj blinked, catching slight alterations in Barholm's expression
—funny
,
I was never this good at that before—
and decided that the yokels had done themselves no harm and the usher herself no good. It had been a long time since anyone got to the Chair without wanting it bad enough to wet-dream about it waking and sleeping; that was one of the Civil Government's problems. It would probably be better if somebody like Thom Poplanich could inherit the job for once.

Of course, Thom was a gentleman and a scholar; he wouldn't last a week.

"Messer Bendict Cromar Buthelesi, representing sundry gentlefolk!" the herald announced. Unusually blunt; somebody must have under-bribed.

"Your Exalted Vice-Governorship," the leader of the delegation began; Raj placed the accent, Gaur County, about halfway up the Hemmar River. "We represent the Gaur County Locks Association, and the Seven Hills coal proprietors." The voice was gathering a little assurance as it spoke, though his hands fumbled with the sealed package of documents. "As Your Exaltedness knows, the locks are being reconstructed to be passable for steam riverboats." Those had become numerous, over the last fifty years or so.

Most of the bureaucrats affected an elaborate boredom; an educated man learned of the doings of the unFallen, not the grubby, oily expedients which passed for technology in this degenerate age. Two were fully alert; Chancellor Tzetzas and Barholm. Who, being a Descott man and practical to a fault, was keenly interested in anything that increased the tax revenues of the State.

"Yes, yes," Barholm said, waving a hand to urge the man past the background data. "I've seen the plans."

The petitioner continued doggedly, obviously plowing through a rehearsed speech. Too wired tense to do anything else, even when a new factor entered the equation.

"Your Exaltedness . . . ah." Barholm's glare finally forced the speaker to summarize. "That is, His Supremacy the Governor Vernier, Vice-regent of The Spirit of Man of the Stars, we're orthodox in Gaur County, my lord . . . that is, the State advanced part of the cost of the renovations . . . but the materials have been so late, my
lord! While the locks are out of operation, we . . . there's no cash flow, my lord, and the expenses . . . and, well, the coal has to go by animal haulage to below the falls. Your Exaltedness, we beg for relief, either on our interest payments or our taxes."

Barholm frowned, his fingers drumming on one arm of the chair while he beckoned an advisor. Tzetzas' face stayed as calm as a mosaic Avatar, but his fingers riffled through a small box of index cards.

I
wonder what's behind all this
,
Raj thought idly. Porifro Rifera's
Tactics and Strategy
had a whole chapter on the importance of transport in extended operations, and the Gaur Falls were the major break on the river between East Residence and the head of navigation in the Oxhead Mountain foothills.
Wonder how it'll turn out
.

observe: 
 

A rectangle blanked in the air in front of him, then split: the left side flashed

action by the Vice-Governor. 
 

The falls, and the canal around them. Barges unloaded casks of cement, gangs of laborers, bundles of new-forged pickaxes and barrels of blasting powder. A side-wheel steamer tug pulled a train of barges into a basin whose sides shone with new-cut ashlar blocks; the barges were loaded with bales of hides, cauldrons of pitch, grain, dried fruit, others had holds piled high with gleaming coal. The town behind bustled.

reference to the Chancellor. 
 

The same scene, but he could tell it was nearly a year later. The steamer tug bore the weighing-scale blazon of Tzetzas' family on the side of its stack; as did the carts bringing down coal from the mines. A coffle was being driven onto a barge by armed guards in the Chancellor's livery; the people on the chain had the black brands of debt-bondsmen on their cheeks. Raj recognized the petitioners, in rough burlap prison tunics rather than the quietly affluent clothing they wore today; behind them were their families, others that were probably their retainers. There was a scuffle as the guards unhitched a girl of fourteen from behind Bendict, began pushing her forward under the overhang of the barge as they stripped the tunic up over her head. She screamed and struggled, and so did Bendict until a truncheon struck the side of his head with a sound like a rock on melon.

"Well, delay is certainly a serious . . ." Barholm was beginning. Tzetzas's messenger threaded his way to the Vice-Governor's chair, leaned to murmur in his ear. Barholm's face changed, going smooth and hard. " . . . serious matter," he continued, in a harsher tone. "I expect better of those the State sees fit to aid than excuses! Direct your petition to Chancellor Tzetzas, and perhaps something can be done."

Beside him Stanson whispered
sotto voce;
with the acoustics in here, you could do that pretty safely.

"Yeah, talk to Tzetzas and you're done, the way the monkey did the miller's wife."

Raj made a noncommittal grunt; there were some people it was
never
safe to talk about.

"But my lord!" the petitioner wailed, dropping the package of documents. "He—the Honorable Chancellor—he owns the firms that have been delaying delivery of the construction materials!"

"Are you making allegations about my Chancellor? Perhaps you question my judgment, my uncle His Supremacy's judgment?"

"No, Your Exaltedness," the man whispered.

Barholm smiled like a wardog in a butcher's shop. "Well, move along then. As you mentioned, Chancellor Tzetzas has extensive interests in enterprises dedicated to the upbuilding of the State and the furtherance of the designs of Spirit of Man. Perhaps you could arrange a loan."

observe. 
 

 . . . and a banker in a skullcap was handing over deeds in a small office richly paneled in Zanj ebony, eyes cold with distaste as Tzetzas riffled through them. The gaslights glittered on the elaborate seals. 

"And with these as security, I'm sure the further loan to His Exaltedness will go through at, oh, half of prime." Silence, then: "Unless, Joshua, you feel that you should join your compatriots in buying the forced war bond? Granted that it pays no interest at all, but given the Church's position on nonbelievers . . . " 

Stanson nudged his foot, less likely to be seen. "What's that funny shimmer in front of your eyes?" he said.

Shut up
,
Raj said mentally. Whispering: "Quiet."

The other Guardsman shrugged slightly; Raj knew Stanson thought—what was the phrase he'd used—that Raj Whitehall had a serious pickle up the ass, and was too freshly down from the Descott hills.
And I think he's a fop who feels his birth puts him above discipline
.
Not that it would be wise to say it; Stanson had killed four men in duels, and Raj had better things to do with his time than learn how to be a duelist-gunman. Now, with a saber it might be interesting . . .

The next petitioners were complaining about the tax formers in their district; everyone expected them to squeeze—that was where their profit came from, the difference between what they bid for the district to the government and what they could collect from the populace—but these were supposedly stripping productive assets, not just money and goods.

observe. 
 

A peasant stood in the furrows, watching gape-jawed as the tax-farmer's men walked away with the oxen, and the plow itself for good measure. A typical low country peon in a rough linen tunic of unbleached fabric, his beard reaching to his chest and half his teeth gone. Middle-aged even at the thirty he looked to be, with a burlap sack wrapped around his head against the gray slanting rain and more rags about his feet. The animals bawled in panic, their great brown eyes rolling. It must be a more than usually prosperous farm, to afford a team so sturdy. At the sound the peasant seemed to shake himself, take a few lumbering paces forward.

"'are!" he said. "'are, wait nu, Oi've t' barley t'git in, y'kenna tek—"

The leader of the tax collectors was mounted on a fine black Alsatian, fifteen hands at the shoulder, whose bridle did
not
include the usual steel-cage muzzle. He was armed as well, pistol and shotgun, but he made no move toward the weapons; the dog half-turned, baring finger-long teeth and rumbling like thunder in the deep chest. The peon stopped, well out of snapping range, and stood with his fists clenched in impotent rage. The mounted man rode closer, the dog's feet sinking deep in the wet plowed earth; then he leaned over and slashed the peasant across the face with his crop.

"Well, then tell your master to pay his taxes, you clod! The oxen first, and your brats next year. Twenty pieces of silver, or two hundred bushels of corn, or a bale of first-grade tobacco; that's the assessment on this plot."

Raj's lips tightened. 
 

action by the Vice-Governor. 
 

The tax collector, face covered with tears and mucus as soldiers cut him down from the flogging triangle. Wagons unloading china and silverware at a small manor house, with the squire's lady bustling about giving sharp-voiced directions:

"Watch tha clod feet, ninny! Like enough half is stolen nor broke already!"