Deep Secret (45 page)

He finished blowing the fanfare and brought the trumpet smartly down to rest against his right flank. “Silence!” he called out. “Silence for the Emperor Koryfos the Great!”

One forgets what lungs centaurs have. Rob’s ringing shout caused every movement and murmur to stop – except for the irrepressible Kornelius Punt, who was hugging himself and muttering, “A centaur now! A
centaur
! Now I have really seen it all!”

More soldiers entered the room behind Rob. They wore the uniforms I had always associated with an Empire honour guard, the royal blue and gold of Rob’s jacket, and bore themselves very smartly and formally. I heard one of the troops holding Thurless whisper, “They’re from the Twenty-Ninth! I thought we’d left them holding down Iforion!” They were followed by four splendidly dressed people. Zinka in her green velvet was one. Next to her was Lady Alexandra in full court dress, train, fan, coronet and all, and beside her was Jeffros as a Mage of the Empire in full panoply, and the flared cloak with Infinity shining on it in gold. The fourth was a Magid in ceremonial robes: white damask, fluttering purple bands, everything. Infinity shone on his breast too. Will and I both exclaimed as we recognised our brother Simon.

Following them, the Emperor came in.

There was no question he was Koryfos the Great. He was exactly like every statue I had ever seen, in the palace or around Iforion. There was also no question that he was my neighbour Andrew as well. His hair was maybe yellower and his face a touch browner, but I was nevertheless astonished that I had never seen the likeness before. The
distrait
and unassuming bearing of Andrew must have misled me. There was no question now that he was indeed Emperor. He came in wearing, like Rob, borrowed uniform and he even had his customary vague and modest look. And you realised you had never seen majesty before. People on Earth, particularly, are not used to real kings any more. But this was such a real king that your throat caught with awe.

At least three-quarters of the people in that room acknowledged his royalty by bowing. I saw fat Wendy thump to her knees in an utterly sincere attempt to curtsey. She looked very ashamed of the mess she had made of it.

My erstwhile neighbour stopped and looked round at the confusion of tumbled chairs and beam burns. “I’m looking for General Commander Dakros,” he said.

Dakros hastened between two crooked rows of chairs, and when he reached the space formed by Rob and the honour guard, he went down on one knee. It looked perfectly natural. “Here, sire,” he said. “Forgive me. I would never have forced you to come Naywards if I—”

“I have heard the facts. You needed to be here,” Koryfos said. “I am here to confirm your actions and to reappoint you as General-in-Chief of the Empire. But we must finish this business quickly. I need a second coronation, General. And this centaur is my heir. His status must be ratified as well. So please stand up and then tell me whether you have found the criminals you came to catch.”

Dakros got up quickly. “Jaleila was found and put to death,” he said, “but Gramos Albek is probably hiding—”

The new Emperor stopped him with a small gesture. “Thank you. Where is Gramos Albek?”

He looked across the scattered groups of awed people and the force of it literally dragged Gram White out of hiding. I have never seen anything like it. I wish I had half that much power as a Magid. Gram White came out of his hiding place under a row of chairs, scrambling, toppling the chairs, and utterly unwilling, but he came. He came shuffling along the rows of seats and among people who all backed away from him, with his head bent and protest in every motion and line of his body, but he was quite unable to resist the desire of Koryfos. About halfway, he managed to put his hand in his robes for his gun. Koryfos simply shook his head slightly. White’s face puckered with fury, but he took his hand away. He came stumbling unwillingly on until he was level with me. There, with an effort that made veins bulge beside his eyes, he stopped and glared at me.

I saw what he was thinking. I said, “Don’t be a fool!”

White had nothing to lose, I suppose. Trembling with the effort it took to stand there and not walk towards Koryfos, he tried, once again, to open a gate and strip me. The
geas
took instant effect. It looked like a massive coronary to me. The man’s face turned bluish-purple, lips and all, his arms jerked and then he clutched at his chest as if the pain was so bad he could not help it. He doubled up slightly. But he managed to keep his eyes on me, staring at me tauntingly. “
See?”
his look said. “See what you made me do!” He hoped I would carry the guilt of his death for years. Sometimes I have to work very hard not to. But he did it to himself really. Besides, I noticed that Koryfos did nothing to prevent him. It was, in its manner, an execution.

White pitched down by my feet. While I stared at him, thinking what a small thing – and how absolute a one – separates a live person from a dead one, I heard the Emperor say, “Both bodies are to be taken to the further carrier and incinerated. I shall be talking to the necessary people in the nearer carrier. Rupert.”

I looked up to see my sometime neighbour looking at me, with the same courtesy he used when he came to borrow sugar, but with all the difference in the multiverse. It was a politeness strong enough to stun.

“I want to see you shortly,” he said. “For the moment I’ll just say thank you.”

He turned and left. The hall seemed dimmer without him. As the others, including Dakros, followed him, Rob touched my arm and said quietly, “Thank you,” too. I could not think what on Earth or elsewhere either of them should thank me for. I had done nothing but blunder about. In the end, I concluded that Koryfos meant all the driving about I used to do for him.

The power of Koryfos was still apparent two hours later. The convention – probably – was still going on. At least the armed men, along with Fisk and Thurless, had vanished to take part in various events, to my great relief. But somehow all those who might have business with the Empire were drawn towards the hotel entrance, where Odile still worked, with her fair head down, resolutely ignoring all the strange activity around her.

The foyer was less bright than usual because of the great shiny bulk of the troop carrier outside. Behind it, you could just glimpse the second carrier in which Koryfos had arrived, further down the market square. But Koryfos was now in the nearer one and the foyer became his waiting room. We all sat or stood about in there. Lady Alexandra was there most of the time, acting as a sort of Emperor’s aide, soothing or explaining to those who felt they had waited long enough, or else simply walking about talking to Tina Gianetti. From what I overheard, the two of them were comparing notes, ardently and inwardly, on what it really felt like to be a public figure. Meanwhile, as further aides, Jeffros, Zinka and Simon were moving people in and out of the carrier.

Zinka spared a moment to lean down to Will and me. “Do forgive me for not turning up to help,” she said. “I’d just got loose from the manager when Si came through on my portable phone, saying he’d got a centaur and someone he was sure was Koryfos asking him for help, and saying if I didn’t get myself to Iforion to help him sort it out he was in serious danger of screaming. And of course I had to go belting off there at once. It was all a huge rush after that.”

“How did they end up in Iforion?” Will wanted to know.

“I wish I knew!” Zinka said and hastened away.

Will and I sat on in the foyer. Various members of the hotel staff kept coming there to stare wonderingly out of the glass doors at the carrier. “Is it a UFO?” most of them almost invariably asked me.

“Yes, you might say that,” I told them. It always seemed to make them happier. “Why is it,” I asked Will, after the seventh or eighth time, “that they see a thing and don’t know what it is, and I tell them that it’s an unidentified flying object, and they go away perfectly satisfied?”

Nick laughed. “
Everyone
knows what a UFO is!”

This was shortly after Ted Mallory had come away from the carrier, looking bewildered, and saying, “I don’t get it. I’ve just been offered a chance to live in this Empire, wherever it is. Of course I said I couldn’t. I have Nick to care for after – now that… as things are.”

Nick, at this, looked much happier. He had seen Koryfos among the first, just after Maree, and I gathered from the way he looked after Mallory said this, that Nick too had declined to live in the Empire and had been wondering quite what he would do if Ted Mallory did not want him.

Maree, sitting between Will and me, was very quiet. She just sat there with her chin mutinously bunched.

Soon after that, Will was called to see Koryfos. Maxim Hough came in through the glass doors from the carrier with his arm bandaged and sat down next to me. “People!” he said. “Can you believe this? The Southampton Convention committee have just asked me where I hired the soldiers and the troop carriers. They want them for their con too! And that idiot Punt keeps getting himself thrown off both carriers. I suppose he’s harmless. But he must be the noisiest man in this world. He’s going to live in my mind as part of a con I shall never forget!”

“Bad memories?” I asked. I felt responsible, particularly for his arm.

“Well,” Maxim said, considering, “I’ve never seen anyone die before. Perhaps one should. It’s part of life, after all, But if you had told me a week ago that any of this could happen at a convention, I’d have laughed in your face.”

“I didn’t know it was going to happen,” I protested.

Here my brother Simon came up and said I was needed. I got up and followed him out of the glass doors and up the enormous clanging ramp to the entry near the front of the carrier. Inside, it was all rather like a submarine. There were lots of narrow metal passages with curt groups of letters and numbers stencilled at every corner in various colours, colour-coded, I gathered. Simon took me by the red codes, deep into the murmuring heart of the great vehicle and finally to a little steel cubby-hole open at one side of a corridor. We sat on a narrow steel bench at the end of it. The bench was designed, I think, to keep a sentry awake. It was certainly darned uncomfortable.

“Waiting room?” I said.

“After a fashion,” said my brother and sprawled his legs, robes and all. Simon is the most restless man I know. He looks more like Will than me, since he is tall and sturdy, but fairer than both of us, with sharp cheekbones. “I wanted to have a word with you first, because I seem to have got pitchforked into a business that ought to be yours.”

“Yes, how
did
you get mixed up in it?” I said.

“Zinka phoned me in the middle of last night,” Simon said. “And I’d been getting a feeling anyway that you, or Will, were in a bit of trouble. So, as she’d woken me up, I thought I might as well come here and see what I could do. And I was in transit and quite near the Empire when I came across a centaur and somebody who was obviously Koryfos the Great, blundering about a hillside, not quite sure whereabouts in the Empire they needed to go. Things had changed a bit since Koryfos was last there. So I took them in tow and led them along to Iforion and then found myself having to organise the restoration of Koryfos as Emperor.”

“As was Intended,” I said.

“I’m afraid so,” Si said, tossing legs and robes about as he sat. “I need to talk to you because of that. I seem to have got your job with the Koryfonic Empire now. Sorry about that. Koryfos will tell you about how it happened. But there’s no doubt that that’s Intended too. The Upper Room has been in touch. You’ll be getting confirmation from Senior Magid any time now. She’ll be confirming that, and that you’ve selected Maree Mallory as the newest Magid.”

“I hadn’t actually quite—” I began.

“The Upper Room seems quite clear that you have,” said Si. “They say you can sponsor her, but they want her to come to the Empire for now so that I can teach her.”

My stomach sank. “In other words,” I said dismally, “I’m being relieved of all my responsibilities, pending reprimand. Am I suspended for incompetence, or something else?”

“It’s not really like that.” Simon surged to his feet, having sat still for actually slightly longer than he usually did. “You talk to them,” he said, roving around in front of me, “and you’ll see. I think they may even be slightly ashamed of themselves – anyway, they were discussing giving you something slightly easier after this.”

“Like a violently science-ridden world Naywards of here,” I said bitterly.

Simon paused in his roving and tried to pick some of the trim off the doorway of the cubby-hole. It was firmly fixed, so he left it and roved about again. I knew that if he had got it loose he would have played with it for an hour and then tried to weave it into the ceiling grating. I smiled, in spite of my growing depression. It was good to see Si again. “No. Don’t talk nonsense,” he said. “You see, what seems to have gone on is that they were Intending to work the Empire round to the point where all the prophecies said Koryfos would return, and as far as they knew, that meant more or less destroying it first. Koryfos says he doesn’t think that was right, but there you go. The Upper Room do this sometimes. Anyway, Will says and Rob says that
you
thought they Intended to get the Empire saddled with a boy Emperor and then let it collapse around him. Rob’s sure you worried about that and tried to keep Nick away from Dakros because you were so worried. But in actual fact, Rupert,
you
were the Upper Room’s boy Emperor yourself.
You
were the one it was suppose to all fold up around.”

“Thank you
very
much!” I said.

“Well, you
have
only been a Magid for just over two years,” Si said. “I think you’ve done damn well, considering you had the Upper Room working against you most of the way. I think it’s only thanks to you encouraging Dakros that there’s still an Empire for Koryfos to rule, frankly.”

“I haven’t done well,” I said. “I can see any world that’s offered me as Magid in charge in future screaming, ‘No! Not
R. Venables
! Anyone but R. Venables! He lets all those people die! He lets children get their throats cut!’”