In the Hall of the Martian King (28 page)

He wanted to ask if she was all right, but even here, naked together on his bed, the two of them—old friends, toktru toves,
trusted pizos, and the best kind of open lovers though they were—dared not speak of any such thing. He could guess that one
reason why Caccitepe had not simply sacked him, or had him killed, was that Myxenna had promised that she could “fix” him,
and that she had made the promise to save him. Now for her sake he needed to get fixed … or at least ensure that whatever
went wrong next was plainly not her fault. He had to help Myx to salvage him, and thereby both their asses. “Well,” he said,
“I’m blown with PASC, no question. No fixing that.”

“We’d come to the same conclusion.”

“This place is the solar system’s center for martial arts. No elderly ceremonial guards. My chances of stealing the lifelog
again are pretty slim. If I do find a way, I guess I can try to make Clarbo get the credit. Though that poor gweetz could
probably get stuck with the blame for a rainstorm. And as for Shyf … well, that one’s a no, Myx, I just can’t. I’ll rob my
hosts, I’ll give the credit to a fool, but … you don’t know what she does to me or how nasty she is about it.”

“I have an idea,” she said. “I knew Seubla too, Jak. And Xabo. And two or three of her other victims who weren’t as close
friends to me. And to judge by what she’s putting together for Kawib’s memorial, I can make too many guesses about what she
does to you. But you’re in luck. Caccitepe says if you can win free of her, he won’t stand in your way. He just won’t help,
and he’s expecting full reports until you do win free. You see, he
does
know you. He knew which thing he couldn’t ask for. That’s one of his secrets. He always knows that …” She got off the bed
and began to dress. “I don’t think we should do anything until your feelings are more settled, Jak, is that all right? I want
to do the right thing by my friend.”

“You are,” he said, and rolled sideways to kiss the middle of her back. Her skin was as soft and tender as ever.

Myxenna got up off the bed with swift grace, not hurrying, but not wasting a moment, dressed, and went out. The door constricted
after her. Jak lay back to stare into space.

When it was time for Sib’s memorial service, Rej and Maruk came for him, and he walked between them to the funeral-launch
facility. It was a beautiful day—most days in Paxhaven were beautiful—and as Jak took his seat on the bench between his Paxhavian
“keepers,” he thought that 180 years ago, this place must have seemed, to the young Sibroillo, as if it had just reached out
and hugged him.

Dujuv, Shadow, Pikia, and Myxenna were already there, seated on a bench together, behind Gweshira, who kept leaning back to
talk to them, anxiously, about something. Clarbo Waynong and Xlini Copermisr sat on a bench in the back, probably more hoping
not to be noticed than anything else.

Jak whispered to Maruk, “The dignified, older man over there, sitting by himself—”

“That’s King Dexorth. He teaches at the Paxhaven Fighting Academy and he was a student there, once, with your uncle.”

Jak glanced up to see King Witerio and Prince Cyx enter and take seats as well, and his heart leapt up to see Princess Shyf
join the crowd. Sib would have been so utterly pleased to have kings and princes at his funeral. Devotion to the aristos had
been the cornerstone of his life, and it seemed only fitting that they return some small measure of that devotion now.

It was almost time to begin, and the sun was just beginning to be a little too warm, when Jak almost jumped out of his skin.
Bex Riveroma had walked in.

Jak could not have missed the big shoulders, shaved head, or hawklike mask of an expression anywhere at any time, and his
most-feared enemy was doing nothing to conceal who he was.

Jak felt Rej’s hand on his arm. “You are here under the strongest of peace bonds.
He
is here to pay respects to a worthy, honored opponent, and to someone who was once his closest friend. That is a fine and
honorable courtesy in Riveroma. See that yours is no less. Do you dak?”

“I dak. Toktru masen. I was just startled.”

Bex Riveroma bowed deeply to Jak Jinnaka, and Jak stood and returned the bow. Then, with what even Jak had to admit was perfect
courtesy, Riveroma bowed successively to Gweshira, to Dujuv, and to Shadow, presumably his salute to worthy opponents. He
saluted each of the aristos present as well; apparently if an extremely wanted criminal was going to appear at a public function,
he would need to mind his manners.

The Paxhavian funeral ceremony is simple, direct, and aimed at what matters—Jak Jinnaka was later to realize that in this,
it was like everything else about Paxhaven. In ascending order of closeness to the deceased, each person in the room stood
and uttered a remembrance, touching either on something good and fine about Sibroillo Jinnaka that the speaker had personally
witnessed, or on some lesson in life learned by having known Sibroillo, or finally about how his or her life had been shaped
by knowing Sib. Jak was glad this was being recorded; he knew he would want to look at it many times.

When there were only three people left to speak, Bex Riveroma told his story of two bright, ambitious boys, always in competition
and always inseparable, so warmly and well that Jak seemed to see the two of them scrambling down a cliff face together on
some long-ago summer day, and thought of himself and Dujuv, and felt so warm and happy for Sib that he completely forgot,
for the moment, that the man speaking was a war criminal, a would-be tyrant, and one of the most dangerous killers in the
solar system.

Then it was Gweshira’s turn, and she talked of the world of adventure and of the understanding of Nakasen’s Principles that
Sib had opened up for her (carefully, for she could not safely mention that it was the Circle Four interpretation of Nakasen’s
Principles that he had brought her into and encouraged her in). And now it was Jak’s turn … he had prepared carefully, but
he found when he stood in front of everyone that all he could do was talk about Sib’s kindness and tenderness to him when
he was very small; he meant to mention so many things on a carefully prepared list, but all the things he talked about had
happened before he was seven years old, moments when his uncle had seemed to be all the love and justice and mercy that there
needed to be in the universe, and he blubbered his way through the entire thing. He felt like he was making a fool of himself,
but he saw that his friends were weeping with him, and took comfort in that.

At last Rej and Maruk got up to recite their new hero tales about Sib. Jak listened attentively, learning much that he had
never known, and linking many things together for the first time. Truly, he thought, his uncle had followed his sword, lived
at the service of the aristos, and every crowned head in the solar system was a little safer, every throne a little more stable,
because of the love and the care Sib had lavished on preserving the established order. There were battles and raids, political
intrigues and matters of honor, affairs and duels, times when the futures of nations had been carried in Sib’s cupped hands,
times when Sib had risked life and honor itself because he had given his word to one insignificant person and he would not
break it. The tales were complex and rich, and if there was much overlap, the different takes were interesting too, Rej concentrating
on Sib’s technique and cleverness, Maruk on his strategy and wisdom.

And now all the speaking was done, and the small rocket stood gleaming in the sunlight, waiting for the laser to kick it away
from the island. They all filed by it, touching the rocket for the last time, and retreated to a safe distance. It rose in
a cloud of fire on its laser propulsion; they watched it until there was nothing left but the steam trail leading up into
the sunlit sky. Somewhere up there, Jak knew, the rocket would activate the breakup commands, and turn itself into a cloud
of metal dust; Sib’s body would fall naked back into the atmosphere, to burn up and spread itself across the Boreal Ocean.
And forever after, so finely divided are atoms, that everywhere on Mars, but especially in Paxhaven, you would always be somewhere
near a little bit of Sibroillo Jinnaka.

Later that day, as everyone had predicted, Shyf’s memorial for Kawib Presgano was a ghastly affair. She wailed and keened
all the way through a vast photo montage of still-shots and moving pictures of her commander of guards; many of them featured
him with Seubla, which was almost more than Jak could bear. It was very much her way; she held her potential enemies close
to her, loved them and cherished them and depended on them emotionally (which they cooperated with mainly due to conditioning,
but also because it was the only way to stay alive for any length of time). At last she would tire of them, or become permanently
afraid of them, or any of a thousand reactions that were unfortunate for them … and they would die in some arranged accident,
or because she continually exposed them to grave risks, or at the hands of her paid killers.

And then she would miss them and grieve for them endlessly. She knew that the hundred or so people she always had in her stable
of conditioned slaves would all be overwhelmed with sympathy for her—sympathy that lay like a thick coat of sweet cream frosting
on a cake made up of solid dogshit. She liked that best of all—the way she could break your heart while making you want to
throw up.

Jak went home, worked through the Disciplines twice (once to honor Sib, once to honor Kawib), did his deconditioning, and
was sound asleep well before dinnertime. There were times, nowadays, when he thought he might like to sleep forever.

J
ak and Dujuv had both been presented at the courts of Uranium and of Greenworld, two of the more affluent and famed courts
of the solar system. Dujuv had been presented at dozens of courts in the Harmless Zone, all of them small, of course, but
all very theatrical in a comic opera kind of way. And Jak had seen the opening of the Chamber of Deputies on Venus—not real
royalty, of course, but still an awe-inspiring ceremony.

Yet afterward, talking with each other, both Jak and Dujuv agreed: their presentation to the King of Paxhaven was the most
beautiful either of them had ever seen. (More than a hundred years later, they would still agree.)

It would have been in the King’s right for the event to be gaudy; with his ancestry and with Paxhaven’s history, he could
have chosen to bedeck his great hall like a carnival midway, and few would have begrudged him that. After all, that was what
kings, princes, and dukes with a tenth of Dexorth’s credentials did.

But instead Paxhaven’s Great Hall was merely a human-scale empty space, perfect in its form and shape, an endless iteration
of golden sections joined to spheres like a geometric proof, all in steel and glass that reflected the bright afternoon polar
sunlight pouring in from the many high elliptical windows. The transparent and reflective surfaces scattered a vivid amber
shadowless indirect light everywhere and filled the upper parts of the room with countless curved and distorted images of
the scene below intermingled with views of the sky outside. The alternating clear and mirrored columns and balls led the eye
to the domed ceiling by one path and returned it by another, so that Jak felt that if he gave in to the impulse to follow
his eyes, he would circle his head as if trying to limber his neck.

King Dexorth of Paxhaven and his court stood on a curved dais at the end of the central aisle between the rows of columns.
His throne had been brought from Earth, and on Earth it had been very old before the first rocket reached toward the sky;
old before Columbus had sailed, in fact. Dexorth wore a very old and very plain silver crown, a simple, unadorned set of battle
fatigues, and black low-topped sneakers; the clothing of someone who meant to work. The nobles around him wore equally plain
battle fatigues, white gis, or plain blue floor-length robes with academic hoods and stoles.

All stood in perfect quiet and silence; every other court that Jak had ever seen had been buzzing with whispering people leaning
in to each other, and bustling quietly as people checked notes, discreetly spoke into their purses, and forgot where they
were and scratched where it itched. These men and women were as silent and as still as any Disciplines master; Jak was shortly
to learn that that was what they all were. Their posture was a perfect shizen-tai, the shoulder-width neutral stance of strong,
patient defense, which expects nothing but can react to anything.

As Jak and the party from the Hive followed Shyf and the Greenworld party up the aisle through the glorious light toward the
peaceful warriors on the dais, Jak’s peripheral vision caught a subtle movement; from behind the pillars, as the party passed,
guards with a bo-ken and a beam pistol would step out, facing the guests, assuming a neutral posture, staff held vertical
in the left hand, right elbow cocked tightly against the body, pistol in the right hand pointed at the ceiling. As the party
passed, the guards would bow, holster the pistol, hold the bo-ken vertical in both hands in front of them in the ancient Warrior
Salute, and vanish back behind the pillar. It was simple and elegant like everything here, but it also kept the arriving party
constantly surrounded by fighters at the ready.

They arrived before the dais, and at a whispered word from Gweshira, they knelt. The floor beneath their knees at once formed
soft, cushiony spots. They bowed their heads.

“Look up,” King Dexorth said. “Be among friends.” He stepped off the dais and advanced to them, his balance still perfect
and his body still neutral. “You have come a great way through terrible difficulties. We keep peace here. We may be able to
find some of it that you can take with you when you go. Here in Paxhaven, we say to a friend, when arriving or departing,
‘Find your way,’ and they answer, ‘Know where you are.’ You may consider that your first lesson.”