Orphan's Triumph

THIRTY-SEVEN

THE STREETS OF MARINUS usually resemble Paris with friendlier drivers. Earth electrics like the staff car that carried me to the Summer Palace, via the boulevards and crooked alleys of the old city, usually elicited smiles and waves from hack drivers and kids on the sidewalks. Silent electrics didn’t spook draft duckbill teams pulling wagons, the way Earth horseless carriages did at the beginning of the last century.

But the day after the Red Moon was kidnapped, drivers in the streets were surly with one another and with me, and crowds picketed outside the palace gates.

Picketing, or more specifically affording citizens the right to assemble freely and petition the government for redress of grievances, was a concept that had rubbed off on Bassin from translated history chipbooks I had given him. At the moment, he probably wanted to give them back.

A sergeant of the Household Guard, plumed and armored and as stiff as his sword, led me to Bassin the First. I recognized him. He had been a platoon sergeant during the Expulsion-in fact I had decorated him myself.

As we clattered up stone stairs, I asked, “What do you make of recent developments, Sergeant?”

He snorted into his gray mustache. “If I may be blunt, General?”

“One soldier to another, Sarge.”

“This old world’s still turning today, ain’t she? If His Majesty would say the word, I’d drop a boiling oil cauldron on them bellyachers. We still got the old cauldrons in the gatehouse. That’s what the queen, may paradise spare her from allies, would have done already.”

“Yep. That’s how we treat dissidents where I come from, Sarge.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Really, sir?” Then he smiled and nodded. He leaned back toward me and covered his mouth with his hand as he whispered, “I suggested it to His Majesty. Perhaps you could put in a word, as well?”

I sighed. “If it comes up.”

Bassin received me on a terrace outside his apartments, overlooking the distant crowds. We stood staring down, our hands on the terrace rail. Bassin smiled, his lips tight. “In my grandmother’s day-in my mother’s day-no one would have dared assemble to express dissatisfaction with monarchial stewardship.”

I smiled back. “Second thoughts about reform?”

“Daily. My grandmothers and my mother would be appalled at the state of the nation. The aristocrats and the western tribes are.”

“Maybe even some of your household staff.”

He smiled again. “Ah, yes. The boiling oil.”

“You could go back to doing things the way your family always did them. Even that. You are the king.”

The absolute monarch of Bren, who had lost a leg and an eye as a maverick crown prince opposed to slavery, crossed his arms. “I’d sooner be hanged and disemboweled by a mob.”

I eyed the protestors beyond the gates. “Be careful what you wish for. I hear your advisers want us to pour the oil for you.”

“They do. But I am king. Jason, if I resort to force at the first disagreement…” He shook his head. “We’ll stay the course of civil resolution here. We’ll assist the motherworld any way we can with the wider war, but you’re the ones with the starships.”

“If you weren’t going to ask me to have my troops break some heads, then why did you ask me here?”

“Not to ask anything of you, my friend. To ask how you’re managing. Ord was more to you than an exceptional noncommissioned officer.”

I stared out across the city, at the slow-flowing River Marin. “I don’t know. How did you manage when your mother died?”

“Badly at first. But they say a son isn’t fully realized until his last parent is gone. I suppose that’s literally true for an heir to a throne. You lost your last parent long ago, but the sergeant major, I think, stepped into that role for you since. Now, Jason, we’re both orphans. There’s no one to point the way for us. Now it’s our job to point the way for others, and the only compass we have is within us.”

Howard was waiting in my office when I got back from the Summer Palace.

He looked up, a nicotine gum stick between his fingers. “Did Bassin need help?”

I cocked my head. “No, I don’t think so. But he gave me some. What’re you doing here?”

“You asked about options.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Howard, what haven’t you been telling me this time?”

He scrunched up his face. “Can I just show you?”