A Confusion of Princes (7 page)

My third encounter with a Prince didn’t make my thoughts about my own future more positive. Another third-year cadet with silver epaulettes, she sat at attention behind an antique (or Bitek reproduction) desk of very shiny mahogany at the far end of the Commandant’s outer office. There was a very long honour board on the wall to the left of her desk, an antique possibly made out of real polished timber rather than a Bitek extrusion. It was headed OUTSTANDING THIRD-YEAR CADET and had names on it going back about a hundred years. A priest was carefully painting on the latest name in gold.

It was ATALIN again.

I sniffed and resolved that I would never be that much of a suck-up. Who wanted to have their name on a piece of ancient wood anyway?

There were numerous other priests here as well, a score or more of them all along one wall, interacting with Psitek visualisations or Mektek projections, presumably to do with the operation of various systems in and around the Academy.

As I got closer to the desk, I picked up the Prince’s identity. Prince Lucisk. Like Prince Atalin, she was a senior cadet, returned from a year-long operational Navy tour for advanced studies at the Academy and to act as a cadet officer.

‘Prince Khemri,’ she said, standing as I approached. ‘The Commandant will see you now. Master Haddad, would you care for refreshment?’

‘No thank you, Highness,’ replied Haddad. He stepped aside and, when I arched an eyebrow at him, gave a slight affirmative nod. Clearly a new Prince and officer cadet did not take his Master of Assassins with him into an interview with the Commandant of the Academy. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any masters or even apprentices around Prince Janokh, and none of the priests in the outer office looked like assassins to me. This sent a small shiver of apprehension through me. I had already come to heavily depend upon Haddad, and if he couldn’t be with me in the Academy . . . that would not be good.

I made sure that I could feel the connection with the Imperial Mind, the slight buzz at the backs of my eyeballs and the base of my skull, which meant it was bearing witness. Whatever I experienced would be recorded far away at the Imperial Core and could be replayed if necessary. If something terrible happened to me, justice would be done.

Also, if I got killed, it should not be a final death. Again, I wasn’t sure of the details, but I knew that if I stayed in contact, I would be resurrected. Or at least my life would be weighed up by the Priests of the Aspect of the Discerning Hand and, presuming I wasn’t found wanting, I would be reborn. And since I hadn’t had the chance to do anything bad yet, I was pretty sure I’d be approved for another go at the Prince business.

Pretty sure . . .

On an even less comforting note, I didn’t know what would happen if I just got really badly injured but was still alive. While I had a redesigned nervous system that included a very high pain threshold, I still felt pain. Pain was a necessary warning system and couldn’t be done away with altogether.

Thinking cheery thoughts like this almost made me fall over the Bitek-cloned hound that was lying near the door. A long, six-legged beast with jaws the size of my torso, it growled angrily and began to get up as I lurched around its chosen place of repose.

‘Down, Troubadour,’ called out the Commandant. He was at the far end of the office, a ridiculously large, bare chamber almost devoid of furnishings and fittings. The floor, ceiling, and walls were all wooden panelling, some of the boards treated with a Bitek luminescence, so the light was soft and diffuse. There was a Mektek command chair in one corner, with two priests standing on either side of it, but that was it for furniture.

The Commandant was standing in the middle of the room, looking imposing and much taller than any of the other Princes I’d met. It took me a second to work out that he was actually on a kind of ramp that slowly sloped up from where I was, making him a good ten centimetres taller—provided I advanced no farther. Which I wasn’t going to do, because there was a visual schematic coming up in my left eye, sent from one of the priests, and it showed a line a few steps ahead of me, and along the line, in flashing letters, CADETS DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE.

‘I am Prince Khemri,’ I said, unnecessarily. He knew who I was, just as I’d got the broadcast from him telling me he was Prince Huzand, Captain of the Imperial Navy, Hero of the Empire Third Class, Initiate of War (Gunnery), Vermilion Wound Badge, Companion of House Jerrazis, and so forth.

‘You mean, “Cadet Khemri reporting, sir”, said Huzand. ‘You’re late. And what’s that filth on your face?’

‘It’s a Bitek digestive agent,’ I said. ‘Someone tried to drown me in the stuff on the way to the temple.’

Huzand glared down at me. I’d been worried that I might not be very handsome among Princes, but looking back at him, I knew I’d done all right in the looks department, comparatively speaking. He wasn’t ugly—no Prince is ever actually ugly, unless it’s by choice, like not having a wound fixed properly—but he had a very round head and sticking-out ears. He looked a bit like the Karruskan cabbage that Uncle Coleport, my last teacher priest when I was only a Prince candidate, had been so fond of. A Karruskan cabbage sitting on top of a very smart tailor’s dummy, since Huzand was wearing full dress uniform, complete with illuminated medals and a blindingly white holster at his side that contained a millennia-obsolete gunpowder revolver with an ivory grip, prominently tagged in my visual overlay as GIFT OF THE EMPEROR TO THE TALENTED DUELIST PRINCE HUZAND, PRESENTED ON THE OCCASION OF HIS FIFTEENTH VICTORY.

‘The Imperial Mind has no record of any such attempted assassination,’ he said. ‘In any case, it—’ ‘I hadn’t connected to the Mind when it happened—’ I started to say.

‘Silence!’ shouted Huzand. Now he looked like a
red
Karruskan cabbage. I wondered why he let his face change like that. He must like it that way, because he could easily dial down the capillary response. ‘You still haven’t introduced yourself properly. Take one demerit, and another for your improper turnout.’

I felt the transition of data concerning me from Huzand to one of his attendant priests nearby, and then to the Imperial Mind, and checked it out. It was not good, as it turned out. Apparently I’d been formally in the Navy only since walking into Huzand’s office, and I was already in trouble. The actual record went like this:

Enlistment recorded Imperial Navy Prince Khemri <> Cadet Ordinary Commence Naval Record 10:47:05 IST
Naval Record Demerit Applied Authority Huzand <> 10:47:50 IST
Naval Record Demerit Applied Authority Huzand <> 10:48:05 IST

I queried the Mind to see what a ‘demerit’ actually was and came up with the fact that it was a negative value in a score that was used to determine my eventual success at the Academy and graduate outcome in terms of rewards and appointments, but also—more important to me at that exact moment—every demerit meant a week confined to the cadet barracks.

I mean, what is the point of being a Prince of the Empire, one of the masters of the whole damned galaxy, and then you get stuck with stupid stuff like this?

‘I never wanted to join the Navy anyway,’ I said. ‘How do I get out?’

I said this aloud, but I also sent it as a question to the Imperial Mind. Naturally, I didn’t like the answer.

:Initial Service must be completed by order of Hier Majesty:

‘I can well believe that you didn’t want to join the Navy, Cadet Khemri,’ said Huzand. ‘I’m sure the Navy does not want you. I suspect you would do far better in something like
Colonial Government
. However, you have chosen the Navy, and the Emperor has accepted you. Now we must try to make you into an officer. You will begin by reporting correctly.’

I didn’t answer for a few seconds. I was still fuming inside, partly at myself. I was going to be stuck in this place, answerable to Huzand and every single Prince downward from him, for a whole year!

But a Prince can do a lot of thinking in a few seconds. I went from anger to consideration to something like acceptance. I was only going to make things worse if I didn’t obey Huzand. I had two demerits already, and a quick scan of how they worked showed up worse things than not getting leave from the Academy.

‘Cadet Khemri reporting, sir!’ I snapped out.

‘Better,’ said Huzand. ‘I see that you have a particularly capable Master of Assassins . . . have you already been offered sponsorship by a House?’

The mutual cooperation societies commonly were called Houses, the only kind of family that a Prince could have. But I didn’t know how these Houses worked, how you joined them, or how many there were, or anything useful like that. I could have queried the Imperial Mind on the spot, but trying to sort through a mass of data while also talking to someone is difficult, and I had not yet learned how to manage it effectively.

Later on, I did ask the Mind, and I discovered that there were more than a thousand Houses. Some were no more than mutual assistance pacts between only a dozen or so Princes, but the most important ones had tens of thousands of members and often quite rigidly defined hierarchies, customs, and duties. House Jerrazis was somewhere in the middle, with fifteen thousand members and a four-tier membership hierarchy. Huzand was effectively the second-in-command, after Prince Jerrazis himself, who was a rear admiral and commander of the Nazhiz Quadrant Fleet.

‘No, sir.’

‘Curious,’ said Huzand. ‘You have no special sponsor at the Imperial Core? Some senior Prince who has taken you under their wing? I see it is several days since your ascension, but you have only just connected to the Mind.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Very well. Despite your slovenliness and initial foolishness, I am prepared to assist you in your career, and accordingly, you are invited to join—as a probationary member, of course— House Jerrazis. Just confirm your acceptance for the Imperial Mind to record.’

‘I decline, sir,’ I answered, rather too readily. If I had managed to get even a bit smarter, I would have taken my time.

‘You decline?’ asked Huzand. The red tide was rising up the cabbage head. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Uh, I don’t want to join a House immediately,’ I said, exercising some belated damage control. ‘I want to think about it. Sir.’

‘Almost all the cadets here at the Kwanantil Domain Naval Academy are proud members of House Jerrazis,’ said Huzand. ‘As are many of the officers of the academic staff.’

Great. So by refusing the invitation, I’d made myself an outsider. But even so, the arch-priest was a lot scarier than Commandant Huzand, and she’d told me not to accept his invitation.

‘I still need to think about it, sir.’

‘As you wish. The invitation will almost certainly not be repeated.’

He looked away from me for a moment, and I caught the edge of some mental communication. Asking about me, obviously, since he looked back and said, ‘I am informed that you travelled to the Kwanantil system aboard a ship belonging to the Kwanantil system governor, Prince Achmir. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied. We had indeed been on a ship belonging to Prince Achmir, but I very much doubted that he knew we were on board.

I also took a microsecond to query the Imperial Mind about Prince Achmir’s House allegiance.

:Prince Achmir <>. Ordinary member House Vethethezk <>:

So Achmir wasn’t all cosied up with Huzand and House Jerrazis, which probably meant something. I inquired further. House Vethethezk had more members than House Jerrazis and was older, headed up by Prince Vethethezk XXII, who was Governor of a whole Reach and more than four hundred years old. From my brief glimpse at the data on it, nearly all its members were Imperial Governors, so it seemed unlikely that they would be enemies of a House that was concentrated in the Navy. But I didn’t know enough to be sure about this. It was bound to be more complicated.

‘Transported here by Achmir and assigned the legendary Master Haddad,’ muttered Huzand.

I kept my face wooden. The
legendary
Master Haddad? I knew he was a senior assassin, and very good at his craft. But for Huzand to call him legendary . . . that was something else.

The Commandant fixed me with what was obviously meant to be a penetrating gaze. I guess I was supposed to crack at this point and confess everything he wanted to know, like for example that I was secretly being sponsored by Prince Achmir and House Vethethezk, they’d set me up with Haddad, and that was why I wouldn’t join House Jerrazis.

He took a couple of steps toward me—not too many, because that would mean leaving his nifty ramp and standing on the same level—and intensified his stare at my ooze-stained face.

‘You resemble someone,’ he said. ‘I can’t quite place it. . . ’

I felt him query the Imperial Mind, I guess doing a visual match. I caught my identifier in the transmission but nothing else. This was interesting on its own account, as it was the first indication I had (other than Haddad telling me it was possible) that mindspeech could be overheard or listened in to.

Huzand frowned a moment later, but I couldn’t tell whether it was a frown of annoyance at not finding out what he wanted or a frown because he’d found out something he didn’t like.

‘You are aware that body sculpting is forbidden to Princes?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied. I didn’t know much about body sculpting, apart from the fact that it was forbidden to Princes and that it typically took at least a few weeks, depending on what was being done. ‘Uh, I’ve only just come out of my candidate temple, sir.’

‘Yes, you wouldn’t have had time. Nor opportunity, if you did indeed take ship from Thorongir Three straight here. I wonder . . .’

‘What do you wonder, sir?’ I asked, trying to be pleasant. For some reason, Huzand didn’t appear to realise that I was being nice to him.

‘None of your insolence, Cadet! You are to join Class 2645, Section Seven, immediately. My aide will give you all the details. Dismissed.’

He waved his hand at me. Since I didn’t know any drill at that point, I waved my hand back at him. As it turned out, he wasn’t saluting; it was more of a ‘get out of my sight’ dismissal, and he didn’t appreciate me returning the gesture.