Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

Mikal was smiling at him, kindly and without fear. Ansset stopped in midspring, forced himself to turn aside, despite the tearing in his brain. He could be forced to kill, but he couldn’t be forced to kill that face. He shoved his hand into the floor, bursting the tense surface, releasing the gel to flow out across the room.

Ansset hardly noticed the pain in his arm where the impact had broken the skin and the gel was agonizing the wound. All he felt was the pain in his mind as he still struggled against the compulsion he had only just barely deflected, that still drove him to try to kill Mikal, that still he fought against, fought down, tried to block.

His body heaved upward, his hand flew through the air, and shattered the back of the chair where Mikal still sat. Blood spurted and splashed, and Ansset was relieved to see that it was his own blood, and not Mikal’s.

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 groan was as much a song of ecstasy as of pain. Somehow Ansset had withstood it long enough, and 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, despite its shattered back where Ansset’s hand had struck. 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 said. The button on his belt was glowing. Guards came quickly into the room. “Take the Chamberlain to a cell,” he ordered them. “If any harm comes to him, all of you will die and your families, too. Do you understand?” The guards understood.

Ansset held his arm. Mikal and Riktors Ashen waited while a doctor 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.”

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 mirth in the laughter.

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

It took the Captain of the Guard 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’s head was still spinning, and he didn’t understand why lasers had been drawn between the emperor and his incorruptible Captain.

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

“You mean Ansset’s strength?”

“Not even I counted on that. I was prepared to kill him, if I needed to,” Mikal said, and Ansset, listening, knew it was true. He wondered why that knowledge didn’t hurt him. He had always known that, eventually, not even he would be indispensable to Mikal, if somehow his death served some vital purpose.

“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 suggest your name as the Captain’s successor. And without that, you wouldn’t have been in a position to take over after you exposed the Chamberlain as the engineer of my assassination, would you? It was good. The guard would have followed you loyally. No taint of assassination would have touched you. Of course, the entire empire would have rebelled immediately. But you’re a good tactician and a better strategist, and your men would have followed you well. 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 Ansset heard 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.

“Kill me now and finish it,” Riktors Ashen said.

Mikal tossed the laser away. “With this? It has no charge. The Chamberlain installed a charge detector at every door in 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 head. Riktors stopped cold.

“Ah,” Mikal said. “No one knows like you do what my bodyguard can accomplish in so short a time.”

And Ansset realized that if Mikal’s laser was not loaded, he couldn’t have stopped Ansset if Ansset had not had strength enough to stop himself. Mikal had trusted him.

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

Ansset’s hands trembled. “Let me kill him now,” he 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 all sign it, and of course you’ll have them all killed the moment you take the throne. And, let’s see, that moment will be three weeks from tomorrow, that should give us time. I’ll abdicate in your favor, sign all the papers, it’ll make the headlines on the newsheets 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 asked. “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.”

Mikal leaned forward on his chair. “A small price. A house for myself and my Songbird until I die. And then he is to be free for the rest of his life, with an income that doesn’t make him dependent on anybody’s favors. Simple enough?”

“I agree.”

“How prudent.” And Mikal laughed again.

The vows were made, the abdication and coronation took a great deal of pomp and the Capital’s caterers became wealthy. All the contenders were slaughtered, and Riktors spent a year going from system to system to quell (brutally) all the rebellions.

After the first few planets were burned over, the other rebellions mostly quelled themselves.