“You two had better be careful,” she’d said, when Sasha had told her the plan. “If you don’t come back, I’ll kill you personally.”
Charlie was still smiling at the thought when he boarded the shuttle, hidden in the midst of a group of other enlisted men, some of whom had been summoned from all over the planet. Admiral Wilhelm had been rotating his personnel, for no clear reason, but it worked in their favour. Very few of the enlisted men and women would know each other if they had never worked together before, so they wouldn’t notice that they suddenly had two newcomers. Even if they knew some of their fellows, they wouldn’t know all of them, or so the plan went. If they were wrong…
He put it out of his mind as the shuttle lifted off the ground and headed towards the command fortress. If they were wrong, they were dead. If they were right, they might still die, but they would have given it their best shot. There was no reason to be nervous. The panic caused by the raid on Schubert provided more than adequate cover for their mission.
But I’m still nervous, he acknowledged, if only to himself. It had been years since he had had to pose as an enlisted man, but the skills had never been forgotten. It helped that the Empire only expected enlisted men to obey orders and show no initiative of their own. There were no portholes in the shuttle — it had been designed for lower-ranking personnel, not tourists or senior officers — but he could imagine the atmosphere giving way to the darkness of space. It might become his tomb
And that, he thought, with a flicker of amusement, would be a damn silly way to die.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Are you nervous?”
Tiberius flinched, half-convinced that Alicia knew everything. He hadn’t told her anything about Daria, or about Cordova, or the plan to unseat — assassinate — Colin, even though she was his lover. She wasn’t Family and, therefore, couldn’t be really trusted. The fact that Daria knew enough to bring down half of the Thousand Families was bad enough; he didn’t want to think about what could happen if Alicia and he ever had a falling out. Marriage, particularly Family weddings, rarely lasted more than a few decades.
He scowled as the ground passed by under their aircar. He’d been brought up to know that he would have a partner chosen for him by his father, just to ensure that the Cicero Family remained prominent among the Thousand Families, who would be from a Family that needed to be aligned with his Family. The act of marriage, even if it had been in name only, would have altered the balance of power for a few years, before the tides changed and the balance altered again. Alicia wouldn’t have been chosen for him, unless her Family somehow managed to develop something the Cicero Family needed; it would have been far more likely for him to marry someone like Kathy Tyler. Instead, he’d inherited the Headship and found himself choosing his own bride.
“Slightly,” he said, as the small building appeared over the horizon. By long-standing agreement, the Imperial Register was neutral ground. The handful of people who ran it had no allegiance to any Clan or Family, choosing instead to remain out of the political struggle and remain above the fray. His father had once said that they were the only honest people on Earth, although he had added, in his deliberately cynical voice, that everyone had their price, or their breaking point. “Aren’t you?”
The building rose up in front of them, a fairy-tale castle, built using the latest materials. It should have fallen crashing to the ground under its own weight, but the metal struts hidden under the shining stone held it in the air, despite looking too thin to hold up anything. The designer had allowed his imagination to run wild, creating a housing for the Register that looked magnificent, and yet slightly silly. Tiberius had wondered, when he had last seen the building, if that were the point. The entire concept was more than a little outdated.
They were greeted, as the aircar landed, by a woman wearing a monkish robe. “Welcome to the Register,” she said, in a voice that was flat and devoid of all emotion. The custodians of the Imperial Register cared nothing for social graces, or even for the people they dealt with every week. Her face, hidden within the robe, was almost impossible to see, while the shapeless robe robbed her of every trace of femininity. “Please follow me.”
She turned and led them into a darkened corridor. They followed, admiring the neatly-designed interior of the building, even if it seemed somehow unwelcoming to their eyes. Tiberius had seen some odd places before, buildings designed by children or spoilt trust fund brats, but the Imperial Register was just odd. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that aliens had constructed it, rather than a human with an advanced knowledge of the human mind and a determination to ensure that no one lingered within his building. It wasn’t a place for the Families.
He scowled. The Imperial Register was the final court of appeal for the Thousand Families, the custodian of their past. The files stored within the fairytale castle could change lives or reshape the past, depending on who gained access to them. His DNA code had been stored at the Register when he’d been born, confirming him as the latest Cicero child, and again when he’d become the Clan’s Head. Every member of the Thousand Families had an entry in the Register, ranging from the legitimate children to the bastards and other accidents left in the wake of a Family member. A registered bastard child might not be in the line of succession, but a smart bastard could go far, using the Family line as a starting point. Some of them had made quite decent careers in the Imperial Navy, despite not having the right to carry the Family’s name. The only difference between them and Tiberius, he acknowledged, was that they had been born in the wrong place, to the wrong mother.
And Daria started out that way, he thought, with a flicker of grim amusement. He had wondered how his father had come to trust her and had finally realised, after spending weeks combing though the files, that Janice had been a Family bastard. Not from Cicero, which was almost a pity, but from a different Family. That hadn’t been common knowledge, not even to most of the Families, probably because her father had cut all ties with her after she had made herself Empress. It had been a unique revenge.
“You are here to link your codes and declare yourself man and wife,” the woman said. She hadn’t even shared her name with them. “Any children born of your body” — she nodded to Alicia — “will be regarded as the first tier of the Cicero Family, the Heirs to the Clan’s history, obligations and honours. You are to become a Cicero until you separate. Do you understand and accept the obligations inherent in this ceremony?”
“I do,” Alicia said. Her hand snuck into Tiberius’s hand. Her Family, being lesser, would be officially dead to her as long as she was his wife. Her children, which she might have grown in a birthing vat rather than in her own womb, would be Cicero, rather than being part of her Family. It was the only way to keep the Families straight, but Tiberius knew that some Family Members were often torn between blood and obligations. It wasn’t as if she was formally forbidden contact with her Family, but she was no longer theirs, not until they parted. “I do understand.”