Out on the street, another guard ran up and whispered something to the corporal at the head of our group. The corporal looked back at me, his antennas lifting straight up like lightning rods. Um: I think I’d been identified. Either someone remembered me from way back when, or they’d seen my face when Jacaranda broadcast my little message. ("Don’t worry, neutral mission, keep calm.") Now they realized I was the Little Father Without Blame. I didn’t know what the guards would do about that, and the guards didn’t know either. Our platoon of escorts gawked at me when they heard the news, but didn’t say a word.
Sorry. They did say one word. "Jush!" And they hurried us even faster toward the palace.
We quick-marched up Diplomats Row to an army checkpoint where Aliens Gate used to be. The gate had been a big diamondwood arch in the palace’s outer palisade, nearly a century old and carved with Mandasar artists’ impressions of various aliens. No species would be flattered by the pictures — humans, for example, were shown as stick-thin and frail, men indistinguishable from women, with huge eyes, tiny mouths, and enormous quantities of hair growing from their heads like cedar bushes — but I still kind of liked the figures. This really was how Mandasars saw us, back years ago when we were exotic curiosities rather than day-to-day acquaintances. (Sam always claimed the male human on the gate was modeled after our father, back when he was just a greenhorn diplomat on Troyen. I couldn’t see the resemblance… but my sister loved thinking everything had some connection to her.)
Aliens Gate was gone now — maybe destroyed in battle, maybe just pulled down by armies occupying the palace, because it’s hard to defend a big open arch. In place of the gate was a narrow walkway past a row of arrow slits, then a path with twists and turns and odd little bumps in the concrete floor, probably designed to make Mandasar warriors stumble if they tried to charge through at speed. The path slanted upward too, rising at least two stories above the actual level of the ground; and once you were inside the walls, you had to go down again, on a set of awkward switchbacking ramps that were fully exposed to cannon and arrow fire from the palace.
It made me wonder how recent these defense measures were. Making it hard for attackers to get in also made it hard for defenders to get out for sorties and counteroffensives. I couldn’t help thinking the folks in the palace had abandoned all hope of fighting their way to open territory; this was their last stand, their Masada, their Alamo. If they had no chance of surviving, they wanted to take a ton of their enemies with them.
Our corporal borrowed a lantern from a guard post and led the way across the dark palace grounds. Once upon a time, this area had bloomed with gardens of glass-lily, queen’s-crown and skyflowers. Now there was only bare earth, tangled over with monofilament razor wire: stuff so sharp, it could even cut through a warrior’s carapace. Behind the wire were trenches, behind the trenches were more trenches, and behind them all was the palace, where archers and cannons were ready to fire on anyone coming too near.
Or maybe there were just archers — the palace’s cannons had stopped shooting. I doubted the Black Army had called off its attack; more likely, the gunners on the ramparts had run out of shells.
We scrambled up the ramp to the palace’s back door — what my sister called the Sphincter. Since the building was shaped like a queen, and this entrance was smack in the middle of the tail section, Sam always joked that the door led right up the queen’s rectum.
Not very funny you think about it.
The stonework here was free of Balrog moss. That was no accident — a lot of the place looked scorched, as if someone had taken a flamethrower to the walls. I guess the palace guards didn’t know the spores were sentient… or else they didn’t care. The stink of burned vegetation was strong enough that even a human nose would smell it.
The same stink filled the corridor inside. This end of the building had once been painted with scenes from around the planet — the great waterfalls at Feelon, the ocean grotto of Pellibav, the sacred hoodoos of the Joalang Mountains — but now the paintings were charred black, with thick flakes of ash littering the floor. The Balrog must have tried to crawl through here like soul-sucking ivy; and it’d been stopped. For the time being, this part of the palace was sanitized… but with the front of the building swallowed up, the red moss would surely keep trying to work its way back.
So we walked through halls that smelled of cinders and battle-musk. It was just vinegary Musk A at the moment, general tension but not panic. Even that was enough to get to Counselor — her antennas were jerking back and forth in little spasms, and her whiskers were constantly shivering. I adjusted my pace to walk beside her, then put out a standard worker pheromone that said, "Just keep going, it’ll be fine."
The smell seemed to help: a moment later, she wrapped one of her thin brown arms in mine. "Thank you, Teelu," she murmured, before the guards Jushed her into silence.
We turned down a side corridor and headed for a ramp to the second floor. This was the way to the royal infirmary, where I’d spent my last year on Troyen. As we climbed, whiffs of Mandasar blood began to overpower the stench of burned Balrog. By the smell of it, the infirmary was still very much in business, caring for an awful lot of sick and wounded. A middle-aged gentle stopped our party at the top of the ramp, scolding the soldiers for bringing filthy humans into a hospital area. Did they want us to infect the place with our awful alien germs? It took our corporal a full thirty seconds to break into her tirade, as he mumbled in Mandasar, "Please, Doctor… please, Doctor… please, Doctor… we must see Gashwan right away."
"Gashwan’s busy," the gentle finally said. "She hasn’t got time to waste on trivialities."
"But, Doctor… but, Doctor… but, Doctor…"
I took a deep breath and stepped forward. "Teeshpodin Ridd ha Wahlisteen pim," I said, trying not to feel sheepish at putting on airs. I am the Little Father Without Blame. "Gashwan himayja, sheeka mo." We must see Gashwan, if you please.
The gentle turned to me, anger on her face. It was the first time she’d seen me clearly — our only light came from the corporal’s lantern, and I’d been standing quietly back in the shadows. For a heartbeat I was sure the doctor would start hollering about dirty hume disease carriers; but her eyes opened wide, and her whiskers trembled. "Teelu" she whispered.
Mandasars gasped up and down the corridor; I nearly gasped with them. It was one thing for Gelestian kids to make the mistake of calling me, "Your Majesty"… but this woman should have known better. I wasn’t a queen, I was a consort. Addressing me as Teelu was like prostrating yourself before the royal plumber.
"Please," I told her, then got all flustered as I tried to think of a nice way to say she should watch her words. But the woman got the wrong idea from my hesitation.
"Yes, Teelu" she replied, whiskers still fluttering. "At once, Teelu." She scuttled off into the next room.
"Um," I said to the rest of the crowd. "Sorry."
"Don’t apologize, Teelu" Counselor whispered to me.
"You really shouldn’t call me that," I told her. "It’s only for queens."
"And you," she said, with no hesitation.
"Jush," muttered one of the guards. But he didn’t sound as tough and confident as before. He might have been wondering if he’d get in trouble for bossing around a queen’s consort. In a way, it was funny — Black Epaulettes were coming to slaughter us all, and these guys were afraid I might yell at them.