David Weber: We Few

"He did it for the good of the Empire," Catrone said, his tone as blunt as before. "And he did it knowing the trial I'd face. He told me my term of service is now until one of us dies."

"And you accepted that order?" Alexandra asked calmly.

"I've always served you, Your Majesty," Catrone said, looking suddenly very old and tired. "I always will. But, yes. When Roger gave that order, I obeyed it as if it had come from the mouth of my Emperor."

"Good," she said. "Good. If he can command that loyalty, that service from you—from my strength and my paladin—then, yes, perhaps I have misjudged him."

She paused, and her lips worked, trying not to smile.

"Thomas... ?"

"No," he said.

"You don't know what I was going to ask," she pointed out.

"Yes, I do," he said. "And the answer is: No. We never have."

"Tempted?" she asked.

He looked up, his eyes hot, almost angry, and half-glared at her. One cheek muscle twitched, and Alexandra smiled warmly.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said, leaning back in her chair, and cradled her chin in one hand, index finger tapping at her cheek. "You've remarried, haven't you, Tomcat?"

"Yes," Tomcat replied warily.

"Pity."

"What's this about, Catrone?" Roger demanded as he strode down the corridor. "Damn it, I'm up to my eyeballs in work. We're all up to our eyeballs in work."

"She's tracking right now," Catrone replied. "She has something she wants to say, and when she calls, you go."

"I'm just getting used to being treated like an adult," Roger snapped. "I'm not happy about being treated like a child again."

"You're not," Eleanora said as she joined them from a cross-corridor. Despreaux was with her, trotting to keep up with the shorter woman, and having a hell of a time doing so in court shoes.

"No, you're not," Roger's fiancée echoed, hopping on one foot and falling behind as she finally gave up and ripped the shoes off. "You're being treated like her Heir. She has something important to say."

The shoes came off, and she carried them in one hand by their straps as she hurried to catch back up.

"It's not just you, Roger," Eleanora said, nodding at Despreaux in thanks. "All of your Companions, your staff, Catrone, the Prime Minister, the full Cabinet, and the leaders of the major parties in both Lords and Commons."

"And in the throne room," Roger growled. "It's a pocking barn! Why the throne room?"

"I don't know," Julian said as he joined them, "but she called for the Imperial Regalia."

Krindi Fain, Honal, and Doc Dobrescu followed in Julian's wake, and Roger glanced at all four of them sourly.

"You guys, too?" he asked as they reached the doors of the throne room.

"Us, too," Julian agreed. "But the Prime Minister and a few of the others have already been in there for over half an hour."

"Crap," Roger said. "Tomcat, you're sure she's not in la-la-land?" he asked, holding up his hand to stop the footman who'd been about to open the door.

"Hasn't been for a day and a half," Catrone replied. "I don't think it's going to stick, but..."

"But we'd better get whatever this is over with while it does, right?" Roger said, lowering his hand and nodding at the flunky.

"Right," Catrone agreed as the throne room door swung open.

The throne room of the Empire of Man was a must-see on any tour of the Palace. It was a hundred meters long, and it had escaped the fighting almost completely unscathed. The soaring ceiling, with its magnificent fresco depicting the rise of Man and of the Empire, was intact, suspended sixty meters in the air by flying buttresses that seemed far too thin to support the weight. But they were ChromSten, representing the power and glory that had supported that rise.

More murals covered the walls, inlaid in precious gems. Spaceflight. Medicine. Chemistry. Trade. The arts. All that it meant to be "Man" was represented upon those walls, evoked by the finest artists humanity had produced. There was nothing abstract, nothing surreal—just the simple depiction of the works which made Man what he was.

The floor was a solid sheet of polished glassteel, clear as distilled water, impervious to wear, unblemished and unmarred by the thousands upon thousands of feet which had crossed it in the half-millennium and more of the Empire's existence. It was two centimeters thick, that glistening floor, protecting the stone beneath. Strange, patchwork-looking stone. The stones composing that patchwork had been removed, carefully, one by one, from all of the great works of Terra. In each case, the stone which was removed had been replaced with one which matched it perfectly, and each of those irregular, varicolored stones—each tile in the throne room's true floor—was labeled and identified. The Parthenon. The Colosseum. The Forbidden City. Machu Piccu. Temples and theaters and cathedrals. Stones from the pyramids of Cheops and of the Mayans. Stones from the Inca, and from the great works of Africa. Stones from the walls where aboriginal peoples had worshiped their ancestors. Stones from the Great Wall, carrying with them, perhaps, the tortured souls of the millions who had died to build it. Thousands of stones, all of them bringing the souls who had worshiped at them and built them alive in this one place, the center of it all.

The Throne of Man itself was placed upon a dais formed by the ChromSten-armored hatch cover from a missile tube. That hatch cover came from Freedom's Fury , the renamed cruiser from whose command deck Miranda I, the first Empress of Man, had led the battle to throw the Dagger Lords off Old Earth and reestablish functioning and growing civilization in the galaxy. Fourteen steps led up to the throne, each of precious metals or gems. But the sere, scarred ChromSten of the ship outshone them all.

The Throne itself was even simpler, only an old, battered, antique command chair from the same ship. Over the years, it had been necessary to rebuild it more than once. But each master craftsman chosen for the task had taken meticulous care to reproduce exactly the same scarring, the same scorching, as the one Miranda the First, Miranda the Great, had sat upon through those awful battles. And it did have those scars, those burns. Right down to the clumsily carved initials, "AS," which had been cut into the side of the chair even before Miranda MacClintock and her followers cut their way to the flight deck of what had been a Dagger Lord ship to turn it against its erstwhile owners.

Alexandra VII, the seventeenth MacClintock in direct succession from Miranda I to sit upon that chair, sat upon it now. Roger saw her in the distance as they entered the room—a regal, distant figure, much like the mother he remembered of old. The Imperial Crown glittered upon her head, and she wore a long train of purple-trimmed, snow-white ice-tiger fur, and held the Scepter in one gloved hand. There were others present, dozens of them, although they seemed lost and lonely in the throne room's vastness, and Roger slowed his pace.

He walked forward, and his staff spread out to either side. Despreaux walked at his right, holding her hated shoes in her hand and fidgeting with them. Then came Julian, tugging on the civilian suit he was just learning to wear. And Honal, wearing the combat suit of a stingship pilot.

Eleanora O'Casey walked to his left, calm and dignified, more accustomed to this room than even Roger. Then Doc Dobrescu, uncomfortable in formal clothes. Krindi Fain, still in his leather harness and kilt. And directly behind him was D'nal Cord—slave, mentor, bodyguard, friend—and Pedi Karuse.

Thomas Catrone walked behind the two Mardukans, but Roger sensed still others behind him. D'estres and Gronningen. Dokkum, Pentzikis and Bosum. Captain Krasnitsky, of the DeGlopper , who'd blown up his own ship to take the second cruiser with him. Ima Hooker, and even Ensign Guha, DeGlopper 's unwitting toombie saboteur. Kane and Sawato. Rastar, waving a sword as his civan cat-walked to the side. The list went on and on, but most especially, he felt a friendly, fatherly hand on his shoulder. The sensation was so strong he actually looked to the side, and for a moment, with something other than his eyes, he saw Armand Pahner's face, calm and sober, ready to face any challenge for his Prince and his Empire. And beside Pahner, Kostas Matsugae stood looking on, wondering whether Roger was well-dressed enough for a formal audience, and tut-tutting over Despreaux's shoes.