Orson Card - Songmaster

Then I should leave.

Mikal sighed. La la la. One of your most boring songs, Ansset, forever singing the same note.

Mikal settled deeply into the chair. It flowed to support his shift of weight. But his face also sagged into a morose expression.

What's wrong? Ansset asked.

Nothing, Mikal said. Oh, it does no good to lie to you. Let's just say I'm tired and affairs of state get heavier the older I become.

Why, Ansset asked, to change the subject-and to satisfy his own curiosity, he was willing to admit to himself, why was the Captain arrested? How did you know?

Oh, that. The Chamberlain's men had been watching the Captain. He visited that place regularly. He claimed to his friends that he was seeing a woman who lived there. But the neighbors all testified under drugs that a woman never lived there. And the Captain was a master at establishing mental blocks. Still, it all would have been circumstantial, even the ship being similar, if you hadn't identified that man who killed himself there. Husk?

Husk. Ansset looked down. I don't like knowing I affirmed the Captain's destruction.

It wasn't pleasant for anybody.

At least the conspiracy is broken, Ansset said, glad for the relief it would bring him from the constant surveillance of the guards.

Broken? Mikal asked. The conspiracy is barely dented. The soldier was able to get poison to the Captain. Therefore there are still plotters within the palace. And therefore I'll instruct Riktors Ashen to keep a close watch on you.

Ansset did not try to hide his disappointment from Mikal.

I know, Mikal said wearily. I know how it grates on you. But the secrets are still locked in your mind, Ansset, and until they come out, what else can I do?

16

The secrets came out the next day.

Mikal held court in the great hall, and at his request Ansset stood with the Chamberlain not far from the throne. Sometime in the afternoon Mikal would have Ansset sing. The rest of the time Ansset resigned himself to watching the boring procession of dignitaries paying their respects to the emperor. They would all be ritually respectful and solicitous and swear their undying love and loyalty to Mikal. Then they would all go home and report how soon they thought Mikal the Terrible would die, and who might succeed him, and what the chances were for grabbing a piece of the empire.

The order of the dignitaries had been carefully worked out to honor loyal friends and humiliate upstarts whose inflated dignity needed puncturing. A minor official from a distant star cluster whose innovations in welfare management had been adopted throughout the empire was officially honored, the first business of the day, and then the real boredom set in. Princes and presidents and satraps and managers, depending on what title had survived the conquest seventy or eighty or ninety years before, all proceeded forward with their retinue, bowing (and their bows showed how afraid they were of Mikal, or how much they wanted to flatter him, or how proud and independent they wanted to seem), uttering a few words asking for a private audience or a special favor, and then backing away to wait along the walls as Mikal put them off with a kind or a curt word.

To particularly humiliate the satrap from Sununuway, he was preceded by a delegation of Black Kinshasans attired in their bizarre ancient Earth costumes. Kinshasa insisted, ridiculously, that it was a sovereign nation, though the Chamberlain whispered in Ansset's ear that they hadn't even got their country in the right place, that ancient Kinshasa had been in the Congo River Valley, while these benighted peasants lived at the southern tip of Africa. Still they thumbed their nose at Mikal, calling their representative an ambassador, and they were so ridiculous that giving them precedence over anyone was a gross insult.

Those toads from Sununuway, said the Chamberlain, "will be madder than hell. He chuckled.

They were picturesque, after a fashion, their hair piled high with bones and decorations holding it all in place, vast piles of beads across their chests and only the tiniest of loincloths keeping them decent. But picturesque or not, Mikal was bored with them already and signaled for wine.

The Chamberlain poured, tasted it, as was the custom, and then took a step toward Mikal's throne. Then he stopped, beckoned to Ansset. Surprised at the summons, Ansset came to him.

Why don't you take the wine to Mikal, Sweet Songbird? the Chamberlain said. The surprise fell away from Ansset's eyes, and he took the wine and headed purposefully toward Mikal's throne.

At that moment, however, pandemonium broke loose.

The Kinshasan envoys reached into their elaborate headdresses and withdrew wooden knives-which had passed the metal detectors and the frisking-and rushed toward the throne. The guards fired quickly, their lasers dropping five of the Kinshasans, but all had aimed at the foremost assassins, and three continued unharmed. They raced on toward the throne, arms extended so the knives were already aimed directly at Mikal's heart. There were shouts and screams. A guard managed to shift his aim and get off a shot, but it was wild, and the others had exhausted their charges on the first shot. They were struggling to recharge their lasers, but knew even as they tried that they would be too late, that nothing would be fast enough to stop the wooden knives from reaching Mikal.

Mikal looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed.

But at that moment Ansset threw the wine goblet at one of the attackers and then leaped out in front of the emperor. He jumped easily into the air and kicked the jaw of the first of the attackers. The angle of the kick was perfect, the force sharp and incredibly hard, and the Kinshasan's head flew fifty feet away into the crowd, as his body slid forward until the wooden knife still clutched in his hand touched Mikal's foot. Ansset came down from the jump in time to bring his hand upward into the abdomen of another attacker so sharply that his arm was buried to the elbow in bowels, and his fingers crushed the man's heart.

The third attacker paused just a moment, thrown from his relentless charge by the sudden onslaught from the child who had stood so harmlessly by the emperor's - throne. That pause was long enough for recharged lasers to be aimed, to flash, and the last Kinshasan assassin fell, dropping ashes as he collapsed, flaming slightly.

The whole thing, from the appearance of the wooden knives to the fall of the last attacker, had taken five seconds.

Ansset stood still in the middle of the hall, gore on his arm, blood splashed all over his body. He looked at the gory hand, at the body he had pulled it out of. A rush of long-blocked memories came back, and he remembered other such bodies, other heads kicked from torsos, other men who had died as Ansset learned the skill of killing with his hands. The guilt that had troubled him when he awakened in the evenings on the boat swept through him now with greater force than ever, for now he knew why he felt it, what the guilt was for.

The searches had all been in vain. The precautions were meaningless. Ansset could not have used a weapon, did not need a weapon-Ansset was the weapon that was to have been used against Father Mikal.

The smell of blood and broken intestines combined with the emotions sweeping his body. He would have vomited. Longed to vomit. But Control asserted itself-it had been instilled in him for such unbearable moments as this. And he stood, his face an impassive mask, waiting.

The guards approached him carefully, unsure what they should do.

But the Chamberlain was sure. Ansset heard the voice, trembling with fear at how close the assassination had come and how close Mikal had been to assassination ever since Ansset had been restored to him, as the Chamberlain shouted, Keep him under guard. Wash him. Never let him be out of a laser's aim for a moment. Then bring him to the council chamber in an hour.