A Confusion of Princes (36 page)

I flailed about in deep, lightless water.

All around me, I felt the Psitek screams and rantings of Princes as they drowned. There and then I knew what happened to most of the thousand Imperial candidates.

With my Mektek navigational systems and sensors out, I had no idea which way was up. But rather than swimming in some random direction, I simply stilled my limbs and let myself float.

Even with the armoured bones and other odds and ends inside me, I knew I was buoyant, and should be even more so than usual with my lungs fully inflated.

That was the theory, anyway. After two minutes—calculated by slow counting, since my internal clocks were not responding—I began to become afraid. The fear came very close to panic, but I kept it in check, and gradually the fear subsided, to be replaced by something that was almost acceptance.

Perhaps drowning wasn’t so bad after all, compared to becoming the Emperor. If I did win this competition, I would be bound to something I had come to despise, essentially imprisoned within the Imperial Mind. Having ultimate power in the Empire would be no compensation for the limitations that would be imposed on . . . on what I supposed was my soul, an archaic word whose meaning I had never really understood before now.

But whatever philosophical thoughts my drowning mind was having at this stage, my body didn’t share them. My eyes caught a glimmer of light, above and to the right. Instantly I was thrashing toward it, arms and legs kicking wildly, using up every last shred of energy, but it seemed to recede before me, continuing to get farther and farther away until suddenly my head broke the surface. Coughing and spitting, I gasped for air; at the same time I looked around for whatever new and terrible threat was undoubtedly about to appear.

25

T
HE LIGHT I had seen was a strip of Bitek luminescence several metres long that was stuck on the rough stone ceiling high above me. In its soft light I saw that I had surfaced in a cavern that was either natural or had been made to look as if it was. It was basically round, about twenty metres in diameter, and at first it appeared as if the only way out of it was to go back down through the water, something I really didn’t want to do.

Then I noticed there was a small dark patch to my right, just above water level. I slowly swam toward it, or more accurately floated with intent in that general direction. I eventually got there and saw it was the mouth of a tunnel that sloped sharply upward.

The tunnel was about as wide as my shoulders, and smoothly bored, pretty much indicating that this was where I was meant to go.

Naturally, I distrusted it. But after looking around several more times, I couldn’t see any alternative. I also needed to get out of the water. It was very cold, and the nanoinhibitor Haddad had given me in the wine had not worn off. I had regained a basic human level of fitness but none of my higher functions. Most importantly, I couldn’t regulate my temperature at the moment, so I was feeling the effects of immersion. I needed to get dry and warm. Or find some means to reactivate my augmentation.

Very slowly, I hauled myself into the tunnel and began to worm my way up. It was dark at first, as soon as I’d blocked the light from the cave with my body, but after five metres or so, there were two little dots of Bitek luminescence, and another pair five meters after that.

I followed the glowing dots for a long time and, after a while, noticed that I was no longer cold, and I felt less tired than I had. My augmentation still hadn’t come back online, but I was used to that from my time in the Adjustment test and on Kharalcha. Heartened, I crawled onward, questing ahead with my Psitek senses, as well as keeping as sharp an eye as possible out for traps.

Eventually, the tunnel began to widen. I slowed down and advanced even more cautiously till I arrived at a door set in the stone. It was of old Mektek, complete with visible rivets, and had a purely mechanical wheel to operate it. I knelt close and checked it over, even listening with my ear against the steel, but I didn’t discover anything. My Psitek senses also didn’t pick up anything on the other side.

I spun the wheel and cracked the door open. Nothing horrible happened, so I eased it open a little more and looked through the gap. It was totally dark beyond the door, and I couldn’t see anything, but I felt a soft breeze upon my face, indicating open space.

I pushed the door open far enough to allow me to slide through and gingerly stepped out of the tunnel. As I did so, an artificial sun suddenly blossomed high above, making me squint and blink as sunshine illuminated everything around me. I had stepped out onto the sandy floor of an ancient circular arena, a vast coloseum made of white stone.

Apart from the sound of my own breath and the soft brush of sand as I moved my feet, the arena was totally silent. There was no audience—the benches that extended high above my head were empty—and there was no one else in the ring. But I noted that there were many doors all around the inner wall, just like the one I had come through. A thousand doors, I would say, which made me immediately look for weapons. Clearly this was where we Princes who had made it through the waterfall and the underground river would fight each other to the death.

A nice, old-fashioned way of finding out the fittest Prince to rule.

The weapons were in the exact centre of the arena, about two hundred metres away. As soon as I saw the shine of steel, I started to run. At almost exactly the same time, a door opened on the far side of the arena and a Prince staggered out. Then off to my right, another door opened, and there was another Prince.

They were moving slowly, but both immediately looked at me, then at what I was running toward, and instantly reacted.

Another door opened to my left, though no one immediately came out. I was halfway to the pile of weapons, closer than any of the others. I tried to run faster, but I was still weak, and several times I almost fell, my slippered feet losing their grip in the sand. It was exhausting running through that stuff, too, for it was quite deep. More like a beach than just a layer of grit laid down over stone or dirt.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flicker of coloured light up in the stands of the arena. I turned my head to glance at it, quickly, and saw that there was someone there, after all. A single figure, sitting alone in a box that was halfway up the stands but projected out to the inner wall that surrounded the ring. I had no time to look. Gasping for air, I hurled myself forward to that central cache of weapons.

Because of my head start, I got there first, but only by a few seconds. Just time enough to take in that there were three swords, two tridents, and two nets. I immediately snatched up a trident and swung around just in time to skewer the Prince who had come up on my left. He was a fast runner, all right, but his speed didn’t serve him at the end, because he ran right onto the trident, throwing me back as the three sharp points speared right through his chest. Judging from the look of shock and surprise on his face, I guess he was too used to his augmentation, which would have allowed him to side-slip at the last second.

There was no time to think about what I’d done. Dropping that trident, I picked up the second one and the net that went with it. I’d never trained with this combination, but I figured it would not be dissimilar to using a sword and nerve-lash.

The next Prince slowed as she approached. She was taller and obviously stronger than me, and she grinned as she circled around, and I matched her movements. I flicked the net to test her, and she swayed back but then lunged in again and grabbed it, yanking it as hard as she could.

Again, she was too used to her augmentation. The net didn’t jerk out of my hand, and in that second while she was still holding it, I stepped forward and threw the trident. It struck her in the neck, and down she went, bleeding out into the sand.

But even dying, she still held the net. I let it go and raced back to pick up a sword just as a third Prince I hadn’t even seen coming did the same.

Both of us went for a shortened stab as we rose up, blades in hand, and both of us missed, each twisting aside and jumping back. I stumbled a little as I landed, and she attacked me immediately, thrusting at my thigh. I parried, stepped aside, and hesitated even as my reflexes began a riposte, which went wide with the hesitation.

It was Atalin. Like me, her ceremonial uniform was muddied and her face and hands were covered with small, bloody abrasions. Her feet were also cut, for she must have left her guest house wearing something heavier than my slippers, and she’d had to abandon them in the water. Again, Haddad had prepared me better than perhaps I deserved.

‘So here we are,
brother
,’ she said, and stepping forward, she cut at my head. I ducked under the swipe and slashed at her arm, but she was too quick, spinning away. Panting, we backed off and circled. I kept most of my focus on her but also tried to look around the arena. Morojal had said there were five real candidates, and I was sure we had all been helped to get to this, presumably final, round. Two Princes lay dead already, but where was the third?

Atalin saw me looking.

‘Morojal told you five real candidates?’ she asked, her focus all on me. Before I could answer, she lunged, the tip of her sword almost reaching my belly as I sucked it in, arched back on my toes, and belatedly parried.

‘Yes,’ I grunted. I opened my eyes a little, as if startled by something I could see behind her, hoping to distract her in my turn. But Atalin did not even glance aside.

‘I got the fifth as she came out her door,’ said Atalin. ‘There’s just the two of us, Khemri. Soon to be one.’

She attacked again. I dodged and parried, giving ground.

‘So . . . Morojal . . . talked to you . . . too?’ I gasped out in between another round of stabs and cuts from Atalin and parries and dodges from me.

‘I talked to
her
after our duel,’ said Atalin. She didn’t seem to be out of breath at all. ‘She told me you’re the favourite. I’m supposed to let you win.’

I counterattacked, driving her back a few steps so I could rake in a long, shuddering breath.

‘She told me, too,’ I said. ‘But I don’t—’

My words were cut off and my head almost went with them as Atalin spun and whipped her sword around at the full extension of her arm. I ducked beneath it, felt my knee tremble and then suddenly collapse, and I was on my back on the ground. Instantly, I rolled away as Atalin’s spin stopped as if arrested by a wire, and she drove her sword point into the sand where I’d been a split second before.

As she pulled it out, I rolled back and struck at her arm. The tip of the sword sliced down and across her forearm, drawing blood, but it was not a decisive blow. Atalin stepped back, raised her sword, and saluted me as I scuttled back and gingerly stood up, testing my knee.

‘First blood to you,’ she said. ‘Not that it makes any difference. I don’t care what the priests want. I
will
be Emperor, and you will be—’

She struck in midsentence, but I was ready for that. We exchanged blows. I parried a lunge and riposted, and when we both stepped back a few seconds later, Atalin had another scratch, this time across her shoulder. Unfortunately, I also had one, a cut along my ribs on the left side.

‘I’m not your sister, either,’ said Atalin conversationally as she slowly moved around, making me circle to the left, putting a strain on my weakened knee. ‘I was just made to look like you.’

‘What?’

‘An illegal bodysculpt,’ she continued. I tried not to pay too much attention to her words, even as my head was swirling, trying to figure out if she was speaking the truth and, if she was, what it meant. This, of course, was her intention. She was trying to distract me for an easier kill.

She continued, still circling, ‘I was made to look like you before I went to the Academy. House Jerrazis did it.’

‘Why?’ I asked as if I didn’t care too much. I knew she was lying, I knew deep inside, and all my real attention was on her eyes and wrist. They would tell me what she was going to do.

Not the words.

‘Who knows?’ said Atalin. ‘Perhaps you were already seen as being weak and sentimental, Khemri. There’s no place for softness in a Prince, or an Emp—’

She lunged at me, full stretch. I tried to dodge, but my knee gave way and the blade went straight through me, into my guts and out the other side. But instead of falling back, I leaned into the blow, slid up the sword, and sank my own weapon into Atalin’s chest, just above her left breast.

Atalin let go of her sword and dropped to one knee. I staggered back but somehow managed to stay on my feet.

She slowly raised one hand and gripped the blade of my sword, just for a moment, in an attempt to pull it out. But she was too weak, the blade too close to her heart. With her augmentation off, blood pumped from the wound, staining the sand at her feet.

‘I lied about the bodysculpt,’ whispered Atalin. ‘Farewell, brother.’

Her hand fell away from the blade, and she slowly crumpled to the ground.

‘No,’ I said urgently. Ignoring the white-hot pain through my middle, I staggered closer to her and knelt by her side.

‘Listen! I don’t want to be Emperor! I want you to be Emperor, so you can let me go!’

‘Go?’ asked Atalin, a fleeting smile passing across her face, which was already white. Her once-bright eyes were fading, and there was a blue dullness spreading around her lips. ‘Go where?’

‘Out of the Empire,’ I said. ‘Promise you’ll get me reborn as I wish!’

‘A Prince’s promise . . .’ muttered Atalin. She was staring at my face, but her eyes saw something else. ‘Worth no more than sand in the wind.’

‘Promise me!’ I shouted. ‘Promise me, sister!’

She mouthed something. It might have been ‘Yes’.

Or just as likely ‘No’.

But I couldn’t ask her again. She had only minutes, maybe seconds, to live, and I had only that much time to make my plan work. A very risky plan that depended on the Imperial Mind witnessing after all, even though the Emperor had said it wouldn’t. I knew from Kharalcha that I couldn’t always feel the connection. Surely the Mind wouldn’t risk losing the final five candidates in some freak accident?