Sebastian of Mars (21 page)

She looked like an old woman.

We were in her private tent, which was not as
large as I would have supposed. My papers lay spread on her
dressing table, behind which two felines waited. My hands were
bound behind my back, and two burly guards stood to either side of
me, daggers drawn. One of them seemed to enjoy pricking me behind
the ear with the razor sharp tip of his knife now and again. I had
been beaten, but not too severely; my eyes were swollen and it felt
as though I might have lost a tooth or two.

All in all, not bad for a F’rar beating.

“I
know
you,” she said quietly, the
viciousness in her voice tempered by thoughtfulness.

She continued to stare at me, and her eyes
dilated again.

One of the guards said gruffly, “He was at
the dinner where the K’fry bitch tried to assassinate you,
m’lady.

Without looking at him, Frane waved him quiet
with the movement of a single finger. “I know that, you idiot.
There’s . . . something more here. What were you doing at that
wagon?”

I said nothing, and Frane turned her cold
gaze on one of the guards.

Trembling, the man said, “The guard on duty
swore this cook was about to crawl underneath the wagon when he
nabbed him. We’ve given the man a medal, my Queen.”

Frane cocked her head to one side and resumed
staring at me.

“A cook . . .” she said, and a sudden thin
smile drew across her lips. It looked like it was etched in
acid.

“He’s not a cook. He’s Haydn’s boy,” she
said.

The other guard said, “That can’t be, my
Queen! The runt Sebastian was lost in the caves of Olympus Mons six
weeks ago! Our spy Jift –”

She looked at him sharply. “Quiet your tongue
before I cut it out of your head!”

There was instant silence in the tent.

“So,” Frane said, turning her attention and
mock sweetness back to me. “Are you Sebastian of Argyre, or
not?”

I said nothing, but only stared at her.

She reached out the thin, wizened fingers of
her right hand and cupped my chin. I felt her claws extend, their
sharpened tips digging into my flesh. Her eyes blazed with an
unnatural fury, and her breath was like fire.

“It is him,” she said, and when she withdrew
her fingers her claws were dripping red with my own blood.

She continued to stare at me with a mixture
of glee and hatred, and then a placid look came over her face and
she turned to her waiting dressers and make-up artists.

“I know what to do
with him,” she said, as if speaking to herself, and then waved the
guards away, who dragged me away, and beat me again.

I
looked out at what
I thought was dawn, through still swollen eyes.

At least a day had passed, perhaps two. I had
not been fed, and had been given water only once, just before a
beating, and so had choked it up, along with my own bile. My mouth
was as parched as the desert. There were bruises on my legs, my
thighs, my buttocks, my chest and back and head. It felt as if at
least one rib was broken.

But these fellows were experts with their
beatings, and they never abused me past my own endurance. There was
always something left for the next time.

Which was overdue.

And I had never told them anything.

I tried to focus on the light above me, which
did not look like daylight, though it was bright enough for it.

The light receded, and then gained in
intensity again.

This happened over and over.

With an effort of will, I forced my right eye
all the way open, and tried to focus.

The lights were on the ceiling of a cave, and
I was moving. I looked to the right, which caused me a shooting
pain through my head and neck, but I persisted.

I saw the running edge of an open wagon, and
red rock walls.

So, I was underground once more, and
moving.

I concentrated on my hearing, which had
diminished; it sounded as though things were far away, and heard
through a wash of surf.

I heard the distant clop of hoofs, and of
many wagon wheels moving.

With an extreme effort of will, I tried to
sit up.

I cried out in pain, and fell back.

A voice sounded through the wash of surf,
answered by another. There was a short laugh, and then a grinning
face appeared above me – someone I had never seen before, or
perhaps one of the many torturers.

A fresh bolt of pain lanced my right
side.

“Give ‘im another kick, then!” I heard
someone say.

The grinning face lowered over me evilly.
“No, ‘e don’t need it, do ‘e?”

I tried to mouth the word, “Please –”

The grinning face grew to cartoon
proportions, and began to laugh. “‘E’s tried t’ speak!”

Again came the lancing pain in my right
side.

“Listen, mate,” the cartoon face said; it
looked to me as if the mouth was moving before I heard the words,
“it’ll all be over soon. So jus’ be a good boy, and be quiet. We
don’t want to wake up the Queen, do we?”

“Wha –” I began, but the lancing pain came
again, more intense. The grinning face was not grinning
anymore.

“Keep your mou’ shut, is all,” the voice,
unattached to the lips, said. “If y’ wake ‘er up I’ll cut your
throat now.”

The face went away,
and I was quiet, watching the ceiling lamps flash by one after the
other, and trying not to die.

I
was awakened by
another sharp pain. I was being pulled, and not gently, from the
wagon. I opened my right eye and saw a wagon behind us, covered in
blood red cloth with the crest of the F’rar clan stitched
prominently on the side. I saw a flash of bright red robes and a
smiling thin face before I was carried in the opposite
direction.

Someone was speaking but I could not hear. I
was dragged past an impossibly long tube, gleaming white. It looked
familiar. Then I felt cold metal at my back, and saw the winding
lash of a rope being moved over me again and again, holding me
fast.

The thin evil face of Frane appeared before
me.

Someone held my head so that I faced her.

From a great distance I heard her speak, and
even then her words sounded like acid.

“Even now, Xarr and the other fools of the
Second Republic are fighting desperately above, on the foothills of
Olympus Mons, to destroy the weapon that will annihilate them. But
it is only a partial force guarding a decoy weapon that they fight.
Those men were expendable to me, and they will die for a great
cause. In the end, Xarr will do anything to destroy that
weapon.

“But of course the real weapon is right here,
at your back. And by the time Xarr finds this out, it will be too
late.”

She brought her face within inches of mine.
Once again I felt her hot, sour breath.

“Good-bye, Sebastian of Argyre. Say hello to
your mother in hell.”

Then she turned, and I heard her say
languidly, “I am hungry. Get me out of here and feed me.”

And I saw, before unconsciousness claimed me,
amid the bowing and scraping of her handlers and hangers-on, a
flash of albino white, and a face I thought I knew . . .

I
came back from a
faraway place.

My mother was there, and my father, and my
sister and Thomas and Xarr and Quiff and many others. There was a
great Elysian plain, all in soft green, and a strange blue sky so
deep it hurt the eyes.

And there were Old Ones there, too, tall and
stately, stentorian-voiced and filled with wisdom. And One was
there, too, only she wasn’t a machine, waving what looked like a
magic wand but was in reality a machine, and there were other
machines in the air and in the ground. It was a world unlike
anything I had ever imagined, and yet it didn’t seem like a
dreamland – it seemed real. It seemed like it might be like on
another world, Earth perhaps.

And then I awoke, into
another dream even stranger than the first.

“H
e’s awake.”

It was a voice I knew, but I could not open
my eyes to make sure. And then I remembered the beatings, and
slowly, painfully, forced my right eyelid open.

But there was only a blur.

“Don’t move, sire. And don’t worry. You’re
safe now.”

There was a mewling sound, and I realized it
was me. I forced it to stop, and then let myself relax, settling
into the dream as if it were real. Every inch of my body hurt, but
it did not feel as if I were on hard ground.

“Poor fellow. He’s a hero and he doesn’t even
know it.”

I knew that voice, too, and wanted to shout,
“Newton!” but my voice wouldn’t work. Only the mewling sound came
again.

So I let myself slip
back down into real dreams, Elysian dreams, and for a while the
real voices receded and nothing hurt . . .

T
his time I was able
to open my right eye.

There was a blur, but it slowly focused, as
if someone were bringing a telescope to focus on an object. I
remembered Newton’s voice, but decided to relegate that back to
dreams for the moment. Instead I concentrated on seeing one sharp
thing.

The thing moved, still a bit of a blur, but
then it drifted into crisp outline.

It was Newton!

“Sire, I see that you’re awake.”

With difficulty, I raised my right paw, and
held it out to him. I saw that it was covered in bandages.

He smiled and took it in his own, patting it
with his other paw. Now another face came into view, and I was sure
that my waking dream had been real.

“Don’t speak, Sire,” Thomas said, and a
feline face had never looked so good to me.

I tried very hard, and managed to croak out a
word: “Xarr...”

“Xarr is well, and busy chasing the F’rar
army, which is scattered to the low hills at the base of Olympus
Mons. I’m afraid we’re not out of the woods yet, Sire, but after
you disabled Frane’s weapon she was forced to choose between
running and fighting. For the moment she has chosen to run. But her
army is a big one, and we may yet have to deal with it.”

I nodded, weakly.

Another thought was rising in my head, and I
tried to bring it out. For a moment it was up there on the tip of
my tongue, “Ji . . .” but then it slipped back down, like a coin
slipping into a pool of water.

Thomas and Newton were waiting, expectant,
but then I closed my eyes and could not muster the strength to open
them again.

“He is healing well,”
I heard Newton say, and then, for a while, I heard no more.

T
he next time I
awoke, which, I was informed, was nearly a day later, I felt a
renewed strength beginning to fill me. I could move my legs without
swift pain, and I brought both of my bandaged hands up and examined
them with both my right eye and, now partially open, my left eye.
My face felt sore, but now it at least felt like a face and not a
sack of cold wet oats. I could move my jaw, and could breathe
without my healing ribs burning like hot coals.

In short, I wanted to get out of bed.

But they wouldn’t let me, Newton scolding
that I still had plenty of mending to do, and Thomas concurring, as
well as the returned Xarr, who stood over me like a brooding beast,
dirty from battle.

“You smell awful, Xarr,” I said, my lips
slowly pushing the words out. I wanted to laugh, but it hurt when I
did so.

He didn’t know what to say, and began to
blubber that he would bathe immediately, until I did laugh,
immediately yowling at the sharp pain it gave me.

I put my paw out and grasped him. “It is good
to see you, old friend.”

“It is good to see you, my King! The last
time, you were so . . .” He gestured with his hands, and I laughed
and finished his thought for him:

“Small?”

“Yes!” he said helplessly, and then laughed
himself.

“I’ve been through a lot, and did a bit of
growing,” I said.

He nodded. “Indeed you have.”

The thing that had eluded me now rose into my
mind like an urgent stab.

“There is something you must do,” I said
slowly.

And then I told him.

“Are you sure?” he asked, surprised and then
angry. “It would explain some things on the battlefield, and
especially off. And it would mean . . .”

Now real anger flushed his face. “It would
mean . . .”

“Rella was innocent.”

Real pain was replaced by even greater anger.
“I will attend to it immediately.”

“Yes,” I said. “And someday we will erect a
monument to Rella, who was F’rar and wanted only to stop this
war.”

He stormed from the room, swearing oaths and
calling for his aids.

Newton, who had watched all this with quiet
interest, said, “You have been very busy, Sire. I understand One
summoned you, over my objections.”

“Yes.”

He bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment.
“My opticians have also been busy.”

“You don’t mean . . .”

He gestured to two apprentices who left the
room and momentarily returned bearing a slick black tube mounted on
a tripod made of gleaming red junto wood.

“My telescope!”

I immediately tried to push myself up in bed,
and was rewarded with bolts of pain in my arms and legs.

Newton helped prop me up as the telescope was
set down beside me.

I brushed a paw over the cool metal tube, the
focuser, the diagonal with its replaceable eyepiece.

“There are three eyepieces,” Newton said
proudly, “and the objective glass is very fine, almost five inches
in diameter. My people did a graceful job.”

I was lost in admiration.

“When you are feeling better, we will set it
up on the volcanic plain, where it is safe, now.”

“Then I must get well very soon.” I looked at
him. “Thank you, Newton.”

“It is good to have you back with us, Sire.”
A gleam came into his eye. “You must tell me about your adventures
with One.”