Serpent's Reach (25 page)

“You would find interest, perhaps,” ser Dain rambled on, while the police in advance of them pushed folk from before the doors to clear passage, “in an example I have in my own house, if you would do me the honour to—”

Shadows moved beyond the tinted-glass doors, out beneath the pillars, about the car…too-tall shadows, fantastical.

“
Sera
,” Jim protested.

Under her cloak she drew her gun, but ser Dain put out his hand, not touching—offering caution. “The police will move them. Please, sera!”

Raen paid him no heed, stayed with the rush of the agents and the police as they burst outside.

Greens. Warriors. They swarmed about the entrance, about the car. “Away!” a policeman shouted at them. “Move away!”

Auditory palps flicked out, back, refusal to listen. The majat did move back somewhat, averaging a line, a group.

“Green-hive!” Raen shouted at them, seeing the beginning formation. She brought her hand out into the open, gun and all. Auditory palps came forward, half. At her right was the car; Merry surely still had the doors locked. “Jim,” she said. “Jim, get in the car. Get in.”

“Blue,” green leader intoned. “Blue-hive Kontrin.”

“I’m Raen Meth-maren. What are greens doing in a beta City?”

“Hive-massster.” There was more than one voice to that, and an ominous clicking from the others. They began to shift position, edging to the sides.

“Watch out!” Raen yelled; and fired as the greens skittered this way and that. Green leader went down squalling. Some leapt. She whirled and fired, careless of bystanders, took others. Police and security began firing with Dain screaming orders, his voice drowned in bystanders’ panic.

Then the greens broke and ran, with blinding rapidity, across the pavings, down into the subway ramp, down into tunnels, elsewhere.

Dying majat scraped frenetically on the concrete, limbs twitching. Humans babbled and sobbed. Raen looked back and saw Jim by the car, on his feet and all right; Dain, surrounded by security personnel, looked ill.

“Better find out if the rest of the building is secure,” Raen said to one of the police. Another, armour-protected, was being dragged from the body of a dead majat; safe, he lay convulsing in shock. Someone was leaning over against the side of a column, vomiting. Two victims were decapitated. Raen looked away, fixed Dain with a stare. “This comes of trifling with the hives, ser. You see the consequences.”

“Not our choosing. They come. They come, and we can’t put them out. They—”

“They feed this world. They buy the grain. Don’t they”

“We can’t put them out of the city.” Dain’s face poured sweat; his hands fluttered as he sought a handkerchief, and mopped at his pallid skin. For an instant Raen thought the aging beta might die on the spot, and so, evidently, did the guards, who moved to support him.

“I believe you, ser Dain,” Raen assured him, moved to pity. “Leave them to me. Lock them out of your buildings; use locks, everywhere, ser Dain. Install security doors. Bars on windows. I can’t stress strongly enough your danger. I know them. Believe me in this.”

Dain answered nothing. His plump face was stark with terror.

Merry had the oar doors open. She waved an angry gesture at Jim, who scrambled in and flung himself into the back seat. She settled into the front, clipped her gun to her belt, slammed the door. “Home,” she told Merry. And then with a sharp look at the azi: “Can you?”

Merry was white with shock. She imagined what it must have been for him, with majat swarming all about the car, only glass between him and majat jaws. He managed to get the car down the ramp and engaged to the track, keyed in the com-unit. “Max,” he said hoarsely, “Max, it’s all right. we’re clear of them now.”

She heard Max answer, reporting all secure elsewhere.

She looked back then. Jim was sitting in the back seat with his hands clasped before his mouth, eyes distracted. “I had my gun,” he said. “I had it in my pocket. I had it in my pocket.”

“Practice on still targets first,” she said. “Not majat.”

He drew a more stable breath, composed himself, azi-calm. The car lurched slightly, having found the home-track, gathered speed.

Out the back window she saw a group of majat along the walkway…the same or others; there was no knowing.

She faced forward again, wiped at her lips. She found herself sweating, shaken. The car whipped along too fast now for hazard: no passers-by could define them at their speed. The lights became a flickering blur.

No majat troubled the A4 ramp. And at the house there was no evidence of difficulty. Raen relaxed in her seat, glad, for once, of the sight of the beta police on guard at the gate. There was a truck at a neighbour’s: the furnishings were being removed. She regarded that bleakly, turned her head again as their own gate opened for them.

Merry took the car slowly up the drive, stopped under the portico and let them out, drove on to put the car in the garage, round the drive and under.

Warrior arrived around the corner of the house, through the narrow front-back access, Raen squinted in the light, anxious about any majat at the moment.

And Max opened the front door, let them both into the shade and coolness of the inner hall. “You’re all right, sera?”

“All right,” she confirmed. “Don’t worry about it. Merry will tell you how it was.”

Warrior stalked in, palps twitching.

“Do you scent greens?” Raen asked. “Greens attacked us. We killed some. They killed humans.”

“Greensss.” Warrior touched her nervously, calmed as she put her hand to its scent-patches, informing it. “Greenss make shift. Reds-golds-greens now. Weakest, greens. Easy to kill. Listen to red-Mind.”

“Who listens, Warrior?”

“Always there. Warrior-Mind, redsss. I am apart. I am Warrior blue. Good you killed greens. Run away greens? Report?”

“Yes”

“Good?”

“They know I’m here now. Let them tell that to their hive.”

“Good,” Warrior concluded. “Good they taste this, Kethiuy-queen. Yess.”

And it touched and stalked back outside.

Jim was standing over against the wall, his face strained. Raen touched his arm. “Go rest,” she said.

And when he had wandered off to his own devices, she drew a deep breath, heard Merry coming in the side door—looked at Max. “No trouble at all while I was gone?”

He shook his head.

“A cold drink, would you?” She walked into the other room, on into the back of the house, toward the comp center.

Messages. The bank was full of them. The screen was flashing, as it would with an urgency.

She keyed in. The screen flipped half a dozen into her vision in rapid sequence. URGENT, most said. CALL DAIN.

One was different. I AM HERE, it said simply. P.R.H.

Pol
.

She sat down, stricken.

More reports. Chaos multiplied, even on Cerdin.

Moth regarded the stacks of printouts with a shiver, and then smiled, a faint and febrile smile.

She looked up at Tand.

“Have you made any progress toward the Istran statistics?”

“They’re there, Eldest. Third stack.”

She reached for them, suffered a fluttering of her hand which scattered them across the table: too little sleep, too little rest lately. She drew a few slow breaths, reached again to bring the papers closer. Tand gathered them and stacked them, laid them directly before her. It embarrassed and angered her.

“Doubtless,” she said, “there are observations in some quarters that the old woman is failing.”

From Tand there was silence.

She brushed through the papers, picked up the cup on the table deliberately to demonstrate the steadiness of her right hand…managed not to spill it, took a drink, set it down again firmly, her heart beating hard. “Get out,” she said to Tand, having achieved the tiny triumph.

Tand started to go. She heard him hesitate. “Eldest,” he said, and came back.

Near her.

“Eldest—”

“I’m not in want of anything.”

“I hear rumours, Eldest.” Tand sank on his knee at the arm of her chair; her heart lurched, so near he was. He looked up into her face, with an earnestness surprising in this man…excellent miming. “Listen to me, Eldest. Perhaps…perhaps there comes a time that one ought to quit, that one could let go, let things pass quietly. Always there was Lian or Lian’s kin; and now there’s you; and is it necessary that things pass this time by your death?”

Bewilderment fell on her at this bizarre manoeuvre of Tand Hald; and within her robes, her left hand held a gun a span’s remove from his chest. Perhaps he knew; but his expression was innocent and desperately earnest. “And always,” she whispered in her age-broken voice, “always I have survived the purges, Tand. Is it now? Do you bring me warning?”

The last question was irony. Her finger almost pulled the trigger, but he showed no apprehension of it. “Resign from Council,” he urged her. “Eldest, resign. Now. Pass it on. You’re feeling your years; you’re tired; I see it…so tired. But you could step aside and enjoy years yet, in quiet, in peace. Haven’t you earned that?”

She breathed a laugh, for this was indeed a strange turn from a Hald. “But we’re immortal,” she whispered. “Tand, perhaps I shall cheat them and not die…ever.”

“Only if you resign.”

The urgency in his voice was plain warning. Perhaps, perhaps, she thought, the young Hald had actually conceived some softheartedness toward her. Perhaps all these years together had meant something.

Resign Council; and let the records fall under more critical eyes. Resign Council; and let one of their choice have his hand to things.

No.

She gave a thin sigh, staring into Tand’s dark and earnest eyes. “It’s a long time since Council functioned without someone’s direction. Who would take Eldest’s place? The Lind? He’s not the man for this age. It would all come undone. He’d not last the month. Who’d follow him? The Brin? She’d be no better.”

“You can’t hold on forever.”

She bit at her dry lips, and even yet the gun was on its target. “Perhaps,” she said, allowing a tremor to her voice, “perhaps I should take some thought in that direction. I was so long, so many, many years at Lian’s side before he passed; I think that I’ve managed rather well, have I not, Tand?”

“Yes, Eldest…
very
well.”

“And power passed smoothly at Lian’s death because I had been so long at his side. My hands were at the controls of things as often as his; and even his assassination couldn’t wrench things out of order…because I was there. Because I knew all his systems and where all the necessary matters were stored. Resign…no. No. That would create chaos. And there are things I know—” Her voice sank to the faintest of whispers, “things I know that are life and death to the Family. My death by violence—or by accident—would be calamity. But perhaps it’s time I began to let things go. Maybe you’re right. I should take a partner, a co-regent.”

Tand’s eyes flickered with startlement.

“As I was with Lian…toward the last. I shall take a co-regent, whoever presents the strongest face and the most solid backing. I shall let Council choose.”

She watched the confusion mount, and kept a smile from her face.

“Young Tand,” she whispered, “that is what I shall do.” She waved her right hand, dismissing him; he seemed never to have realised where her left one was, or if he did, he had good nerves. He rose, grey and grim as iron now, all his polish gone. “I shall send out a message,” she said, “convoking Council for tomorrow. You must carry it You’ll be my courier.”

“Shall I tell the elders why?”

“No,” she said, knowing that she would be disobeyed. “I’ll present them the idea myself. Then they can have their time to choose. The transition of power,” she said, boring with sudden concentration into Tand’s dark eyes, “is always a problem in empires. Those which learn how to make the transfer smoothly…live. In general chaos who knows
who
might die?”

Tand stood still a moment. Moth gave him time to consider the matter. Then she waved her hand a second time, dismissing him. His departure was as deliberate and graceful as usual, although she reckoned what disturbance she had created in him.

And, alone, Moth bowed her head against her hands, trembling. The trembling became a laugh, and she leaned back in her chair in a sprawl, hands clasped across her middle.

Not many rulers had been privileged to be entertained by the wars of their own successions, she reckoned; and the humour of seeing the Hald and their minions blinking in the light with their cover ripped away, publicly
invited
to contend for power, while she still lived… That was worth laughter.

Her assassination had been prepared, imminent. Tand’s action was puzzling…some strange affliction of sentiment, perhaps, or even an offer relayed from the others; and with straight-faced humour she had returned the offer doubled. Of course they would kill her as soon as their choice was well-entrenched in power…but time…
time
was the important thing.

She grinned to herself, and the grin faded as she gathered up the falsified Istran reports, stacked them with the others.

The Meth-maren would have need of time.

To leave this place, Cerdin and Council and all of them, and have such a place as the old Houses had been, old friends, dead friends—that was the only retirement for which Moth yearned, to find again what had died long ago, those who had built—instead of those who used.

But one of the folders was the Meth-maren’s, and Moth opened the record, stared morosely at the woman the child had become.

The data was random and the cross-connections inexplicable, and her old age grew toward mysticism, the only sanity…too much knowledge, too wide a pattern.

Lian also must have seen. He had complained of visions, toward the last, weakness which had encouraged assassins, and hastened his death.

He had died riveted in one of those visions, trembling and frothing, a horror that left no laughter at all in Moth.

She had had to do it.

“Eggs,” Lian had cried in his dying, “eggs…eggs…eggs…eggs,” as if recalling the beta children, the poor orphaned creatures, the parentless generation—the thousands growing up too soon, cared for en masse, assembly lined into adulthood, men and women at ten, to care for others, and others…to bear natural children at permission, as they slid all things at permission, forever.
Give them luxury
, Lian had said once.
Corrupt them, and we shall always control them. Teach them about work and rewards, and reward them with idleness and ambition. So we will always manage them
.