Songmaster (24 page)

“They told me you’re not a prisoner,” the guard said. “But I’m supposed to watch you, me and the others, and not let you do anything dangerous or try to get away. Sounds like a prisoner to me, but I guess they mean I’m supposed to be nice about it.”

“Thanks,” Ansset said, managing a smile. “Does that mean I can go where I want?”

“Depends on where you want.”

“The garden,” Ansset said, and the guard nodded, and he and his companions followed Ansset out of the palace and across the broad lawns to the banks of the Susquehanna. All the way there his Control returned. He remembered the words of his first teacher. “When you want to weep, let the tears come through your throat. Let pain come from the pressure in your thighs. Let sorrow rise and resonate through your head.” Everything was a song and, as a song, could be controlled by the singer.

Walking by the Susquehanna as the lawns turned cold in the afternoon shade, Ansset sang his grief. He sang softly, but the guards heard his song, and could not help but weep for him, too.

He stopped at a place where the water looked cold and clear, and began to strip off his tunic, preparing to swim. A guard reached out a hand and stopped him. Ansset noticed the laser pointed at his foot. “I can’t let you do that. Mikal gave orders you were not to be allowed to take your own life.”

“I only want to swim,” Ansset answered, his voice heady with trustworthiness.

“I’d be killed if any harm came to you,” the guard said.

“I give you my oath that I will only swim. I’m a good swimmer. And I won’t try to get away.”

The guards considered among themselves, and the confidence in Ansset’s voice won out. “Don’t go too far,” the leader told him.

Ansset took off his underwear and dove into the water. It was icy cold, with the chill of autumn on it, and it stung at first. He swam in broad strokes upstream, knowing that to the guards on the bank he would already seem like only a speck on the surface of the water. Then he dove and swam under the water, holding his breath as only a singer or a pearldiver can, and swam across the current toward the near shore, where the guards were waiting. He could hear, though muffled by the water, the cries of the guards. He surfaced, laughing. God, he could laugh again.

Two of the guards had already thrown off their boots and were up to their waists in water, preparing to try to catch Ansset’s body as it swept by. But Ansset kept laughing at them, and they turned at him angrily.

“Why did you worry?” Ansset said. “I gave my word.”

Then the guards relaxed, and Ansset didn’t play any more games with them, just swam and floated and rested on the bank. The chill autumn air was like the perpetual chill of the Songhouse, and though he was cold, he was, not comfortable, but comforted.

And from time to time he swam underwater for a while, listening to the different sound the guard’s quarreling and laughing made when Ansset was distanced from them by the water. They played at polys, and the leader was losing heavily, though he was a good sport about it. And sometimes, in a lull in their game, Ansset could hear the cry of a bird in the distance, made sharper and yet more ambiguous by the roar of the current in his ears.

It was like the muffling of the birdcalls when Ansset had been in his cell on the flatboat. The birds had been Ansset’s only sign that there was a world outside his prison, that even though he was caught up for a time in madness, something still lived that was untouched by it.

And then Ansset made a connection in his mind and realized he had been terribly, terribly wrong. He had been wrong and Mikal had to know about it immediately, had to know about it before something terrible happened, something worse than anything that had gone before—Mikal’s death.

Ansset swam quickly to shore, splashed out of the water, and without any attempt to dry off put on his underwear and his tunic and started off toward the palace. The guards called out, broke up the game, and chased after him. Let them chase, Ansset thought.

“Stop!” cried the guards, but Ansset did not stop. He was only walking. Let them run and catch up.

“Where are you going!” demanded the first one to reach him. The guard caught at his shoulder, tried to stop him, but Anset pulled easily away and sped up.

“To the palace,” Ansset said. “I have to get to the palace!”

The guards were gathered around him now, and some stepped in front of him to try to head him off.

“You were told I could go where I wanted.”

“With limits,” the leader reminded him.

“Am I allowed to go to the palace?”

A moment’s pause. “Of course.”

“I’m going to the palace.”

So they followed him, some of them with lasers drawn, as he entered the palace and began to lead them through the labyrinth. The doors had not been changed—he could open any that he had ever been able to open. And as the guards accompanied him through the labyrinth of the palace, they grew more and more confused. “Where are we going?”

“Don’t you know?” Ansset asked innocently.

“I didn’t know this corridor existed, how could I know where it leads!”

And some of them speculated on whether they would ever be able to find their way out alone. Ansset did not smile, but he wanted to. They were passing close to the kitchens, the mess hall, the guards’ rooms, the places in the palace most familiar to them. But Ansset was more familiar, and left them utterly confused.

There was no confusion, however, when they emerged in the security rooms just outside Mikal’s private room. The leader of the guards instantly recognized it, and in fury planted himself in front of Ansset, his laser drawn. “The one place you can’t go is here,” he said. “Now move, the other way!”

“I’m here to see Mikal. I have to see Mikal!” Ansset raised his voice so it could be heard in the room, in the corridor outside, in any other security room. And sure enough one of the doorservants came to them and asked, in his quiet, unobtrusive way, if he could be of service.

“No,” said the guard.

“I have to see Mikal!” Ansset cried, his voice a song of anguish, a plea for pity. Ansset’s pleas were irresistible. But the servant had no intention of resisting. He merely looked puzzled and asked the guards, “Didn’t you bring him here? Mikal is looking for him.”

“Looking?” the guard asked.

“Mikal wants him in his rooms immediately. And not under guard.”

The leader of the guards lowered his laser. So did the others.

“That’s right,” the doorservant said. “Come this way, Songbird.”

Ansset nodded to the guard, who shrugged and looked away in embarrassment. Then, as the doorservant had suggested, Ansset came that way.

Ansset fit right into the madness, his hair still wet, his tunic clinging to his damp body. But he wasn’t prepared for Mikal and the Chamberlain and Riktors Ashen, the only others in the room. Mikal was oozing joviality. He greeted Ansset with a handshake, something he had never done before. And he sounded incredibly cheerful as he said, “Ansset, my Son, it’s fine now. We were so foolish to think we needed to send you away. The Captain was the only one in the plot close enough to have given you the signal. When he died, I immediately became safe. In fact, as you proved today, my boy, you’re the best bodyguard, I could possibly have!” Mikal laughed, and the Chamberlain and Riktors Ashen joined in as if they hadn’t a care in the world, as if they couldn’t possibly be more delighted with the turn of events. But it was all unbelievable. Ansset knew Mikal’s voice too well. Warnings laced through everything he said and did. Something was wrong.

Well, something
was
wrong, and Ansset immediately told Mikal what he had realized. “Mikal, when I was imprisoned on the flatboat I could hear birds outside. Birds, and that’s all. Nothing else. But when we went down in the boat on the Delaware we heard children laughing on the road and a flesket pass by on the river! I was never kept there! It was a fraud, and the Captain died for it!” But Mikal only shook his head and laughed. The laugh was maddening. Ansset wanted to leap at him, warn him that whoever had made this plot was more clever than they had thought, was still at large—

But the Chamberlain came to him with a bottle of wine in his hand, laughing just as Mikal was, with songs of treachery in his voice. “Never mind that kind of thing,” the Chamberlain said. “It’s time for celebration. You saved Mikal’s life, my boy! I brought some wine. Ansset, why don’t you pour it!”

Ansset shuddered with memories he couldn’t quite grasp.

“I?” Ansset asked, surprised, and then not surprised at all. The Chamberlain held out the full bottle and the empty goblet.

“For the Lord Mikal,” the Chamberlain said.

Ansset shouted and dashed the bottle to the floor. “Make him keep silent!”

The suddenness of Ansset’s violent action brought Riktors’s laser out of his belt and into his hand. Riktors had come armed into Mikal’s private room, Ansset realized with relief. “Don’t let the Chamberlain speak,” Ansset cried.

“Why not?” Mikal asked innocently, and the laser sank in Riktors’s grasp; but Ansset knew there was no innocence behind the words. Mikal was pretending not to understand. Ansset wanted to fly through the ceiling and escape.

But the Chamberlain had not stopped. He said quickly, almost urgently. “Why did you do that? I have another bottle.
Sweet Songbird, let Mikal drink deeply!
”

The words hammered into Ansset’s brain, and by reflex he whirled and faced Mikal. He knew what was happening, knew and screamed against it in his mind. But his hands came up against his will, his legs bent, he compressed to spring, all so quickly that he couldn’t stop himself. He knew that in less than a second his hand would be buried in Mikal’s face, Mikal’s beloved face, Mikal’s smiling face—

Mikal was smiling at him, kindly and without fear. For years Control had come to Ansset to contain emotion. Now it came to express it. He could not, could not, could not hurt Mikal, and yet he was driven to it, he leaped, his, hand struck out—

But it did not sink into Mikal’s face. Instead it plunged into the floor, breaking the surface and becoming immersed in the gel that erupted from the floor. The impact broke the skin of Ansset’s arm; the gel made the pain agonizing; the bone ached with the force of the blow. But Ansset did not feel that pain. All he felt was the pain in his mind as he struggled against the compulsion that still drove at him, to kill Mikal, to kill Mikal.

His body heaved upward, his hand flew through the air, and the back of Mikal’s chair shattered and splashed at the impact. The chair shuddered, then sealed itself. But Ansset’s hand was bleeding; the blood spurted and splashed and skilled across the surface of the gel spreading across the now-lax floor. But it was his own blood, not Mikal’s, and Ansset cried out in joy. It sounded like a scream of agony.

In the distance he heard Mikal’s voice saying, “Don’t shoot him.” And, as suddenly as it had come, the compulsion ceased. His mind spun as he heard the Chamberlain’s words fading away: “
Songbird, what have you done!
”

Those were the words that had set him free.

Exhausted and bleeding, Ansset lay on the floor, his right arm covered with blood. The pain reached him now, and he groaned, though his song was as much a song of triumph as of pain. Somehow Ansset had had strength enough, had withstood it long enough that he had not killed Father Mikal.

Finally he rolled over and sat up, nursing his arm. The bleeding had settled to a slow trickle.

Mikal was still sitting in the chair, which had healed itself. The Chamberlain stood where he had stood ten seconds before, at the beginning of Ansset’s ordeal, the goblet looking ridiculous in his hand. Riktors’s laser was aimed at the Chamberlain.

“Call the guards, Captain,” Mikal said.

“I already have,” Riktors answered. The button on his belt was glowing. Guards came quickly into the room. “Take the Chamberlain to a cell,” Riktors ordered them. “If any harm comes to him, all of you will die, and your families, too. Do you understand?” The guards understood. They were Riktors’s men, not the Chamberlain’s. There was no love there.

Ansset held his arm. Mikal and Riktors Ashen waited while a doctor came and treated it. The pain subsided. The doctor left.

Riktors spoke first. “Of course you knew it was the Chamberlain, my Lord.”

Mikal smiled faintly.

“That was why you let him persuade you to call Ansset back here. To let him show his hand.”

Mikal’s smile grew broader.

“But, my Lord, only you could have known that the Songbird would be strong enough to resist a compulsion that was five months in the making.”

Mikal laughed. And this time Ansset heard real mirth in the laughter.

“Riktors Ashen,” Mikal said. “Will they call you Riktors the Great? Or Riktors the Usurper?”

It took Riktors a moment to realize what had been said. Only a moment. But before his hand could reach his laser, which was back in his belt, Mikal’s hand held a laser that was pointed at Riktors’s heart.

“Ansset, my Son, will you take the Captain’s laser from him?”

Ansset got up and took the Captain’s laser from him. He could hear the song of triumph in Mikal’s voice. But Ansset did not understand. What had Riktors done? This was the man that Esste had told him was as much like Mikal as any man alive—

And Mikal had conquered the galaxy. Oh, Esste had warned him, and he had taken only reassurance from it!

“Only one mistake, Riktors Ashen,” Mikal said. “Otherwise brilliantly done. And I really don’t see how you could have avoided that mistake either.”

“You mean Ansset’s strength?” Riktors asked, his voice still trying to be calm and succeeding amazingly well.

“Not even I counted on that. I was prepared to kill him, if I needed to.” The words did not hurt Ansset. He would rather have died than hurt Mikal, and he knew that Mikal knew that.

“Then I made no mistakes,” Riktors said. “How did you know?”

“Because my Chamberlain, unless he were under some sort of compulsion, would never have had the courage to argue with me, to insist on taking Ansset on his stupid military expedition, to dare to suggest your name when I asked him who ought to become the new Captain of the guard. But you had to have him suggest you, didn’t you, because unless you were Captain you wouldn’t have been in a position to take control when I was dead. The Chamberlain would be the obvious guilty one, while you would be the hero who stepped in and held the empire together. The best possible start to your reign. No taint of assassination would have touched you. Of course, half the empire would have rebelled immediately. But you’re a good tactician and a better strategist and you’re popular with the fleet and a lot of citizens. I’d have given you one chance in four of making it. And that’s better odds than any other man in the empire.”

“I gave myself even odds,” Riktors said, but now Ansset could clearly hear the fear singing through the back of his brave words. Well, why not? Death was certain now, and Ansset knew of no one, except perhaps an old man like Mikal, who could look at death, especially death that also meant failure, without some fear.

But Mikal did not push the button on the laser. Nor did he summon the guards.

“Kill me now and finish it,” Riktors said, pleading for an honorable death, though he knew he did not deserve it.

Mikal tossed the laser away. “With this? It has no charge. The Chamberlain installed a charge detector at every door to my chambers over fifteen years ago. He would have known if I was armed.”

Immediately Riktors took a step forward, the beginning of a rush toward the emperor. Just as quickly Ansset was on his feet, despite the bandaged arm, ready to kill with the other hand, with his feet, with his teeth. Riktors stopped cold.

“Ah,” Mikal said. “You never had time to learn from the man who taught Ansset. What a bodyguard you gave me, Riktors.”

Ansset hardly heard him. All he heard was Mikal’s voice saying, “It has no charge.” Mikal
had
trusted him. Mikal had staked his life on Ansset’s ability to resist the compulsion. Ansset wanted to weep in gratitude for such trust, in fear at such terrible danger only barely averted. Instead he stood still with iron Control and watched Riktors for any sign of movement.

“Riktors,” Mikal went on, “your mistakes were very slight. I hope you’ve learned from them. So that when an assassin as bright as you are tries to take
your
life, you’ll know all the enemies you have and all the allies you can call on and exactly what you can expect from each.”

Ansset looked at Riktor’s face and remembered how glad he had been when the tall soldier had been made Captain. “Let me kill him now,” Ansset said.

Mikal sighed. “Don’t kill for pleasure, my son. If you ever kill for pleasure, you’ll come to hate yourself. Besides, weren’t you listening? I’m going to adopt Riktors Ashen as my heir.”

“I don’t believe you,” Riktors said, but Ansset heard hope in his voice.

“I’ll call in my sons—they stay around court, hoping to be closest to the palace when I die,” Mikal said. “I’ll make them sign an oath to respect you as my heir. Of course they’ll sign it, and of course they’ll all break it, and of course you’ll have them all killed the first moment you can after you take the throne. If any of them is smart at all, he’ll be at the other end of the galaxy by then. But I doubt there’ll be any that bright. When shall we have you crowned? Three weeks from tomorrow is enough time to wait. I’ll abdicate in your favor, sign all the papers, it’ll make the headlines on the newspapers for days. I can just see all the potential rebels tearing their hair with rage. It’s a pleasant picture to retire on.”

Ansset didn’t understand. “Why? He tried to kill you.”

Mikal only laughed. It was Riktors who answered. “He thinks I can hold his empire together. But I want to know the price.”

“Price? What could you give me, Riktors, that you wouldn’t take as a gift for you yourself anyway? I’ve waited for you for sixty years. Seventy years, Riktors. I kept thinking, surely there’s someone out there who covets my power and has guts and brains enough to come get it. And at last you came. You’ll see to it that I didn’t build for nothing. That the wind won’t tear away everything the moment I’m not there to hold it up. All I want after you take the throne is a house for myself and my Songbird until I die. On Earth, so you can keep an eye on me, of course. And with a different name, so that I won’t be plagued by all the bastards who’ll try to get my help to throw you out. And when I’m dead, send Ansset home. Simple enough?”

“I agree,” Riktors said.

“How prudent.” And Mikal laughed again.