12
If the Freemen of Eire had not been guilty, would they have fired on the first imperial troops to come questioning them at their supposedly secret base in Antrim? Some said not. But the Chamberlain said, It's too stupid to believe.
The Captain of the guard held his temper. It all fit. The accent pinpointed them to Antrim. Seventeen members of the group had been in Eastamerica for one reason or another during most or all of the time Ansset was kidnapped. And they opened fire the moment they saw the troops.
'There isn't a nationalist group that wouldn't have opened fire.
There are many nationalist groups that haven't.
Too convenient, I think, the Chamberlain insisted, not looking at Mikal because he had long since learned that looking at Mikal did not help at all to persuade him. Every damn one of the Freemen of Eire were killed. Every one!
They started killing themselves, when they saw they would lose.
And I think that Ansset is still a danger to Mikal!
I've found the conspiracy and destroyed it!
And then silence, as Mikal considered. Has Ansset been able to recognize any of the men you killed?
The Captain turned a little red in the face. There was a fire. Few of the bodies were recognizable. I showed him pictures, and he thinks that two or three might have been--
Might have been, scoffed the Chamberlain.
Might very well have been members of the crew on the ship. I did the best I could. I command fleets, dammit, not small mop-up crews!
Mikal looked at him coldly. Then, Captain, you should have let someone command who knew what he was doing.
I wanted to make-to make sure there weren't any mistakes.
Neither Mikal nor the Chamberlain needed to say anything to that. What's done is done, said the Chamberlain. But I don't think we ought to get complacent. The enemy was clever enough to get Ansset in the first place and keep him for five months where we couldn't find him. I suspect that even if some or all of the crew were Freemen of Eire, the conspiracy didn't originate with them. They were too easy to find. From the accent. Remember, the kidnapper was able to hide every single day from Ansset's memory and our best probing. If he hadn't wanted us to find the Freemen, he would have blocked those memories, too.
The Captain was not one to cling to defeated arguments. You're exactly right. I was taken in.
So were we all, at one time or another, Mikal said, which did much to ease the Captain's discomfort. You may leave, Mikal told him, and the Captain bowed his head and got up and left. The Chamberlain was alone with Mikal in the meeting room, except for the three trusted guards who watched every movement.
I'm concerned, said Mikal.
And so am I.
No doubt. I'm worried because the Captain is not a stupid man, and he has been behaving stupidly. I assume you've been having men follow him ever since he was appointed.
The Chamberlain tried to protest.
If you haven't been following him, you haven't been doing a very good job.
I've been having him followed.
Get the records and correlate them with Ansset's kidnapping. See what you find.
The Chamberlain nodded. Waited a moment, and then, when Mikal seemed to have lost interest in him, got up and left.
When Mikal was alone (except for the guards, but he had learned to dismiss them from his mind, except for the constant watch against an unwary word), he sighed, stretched his arms, heard his joints pop. His joints had never popped until he was over a hundred years old. Where's Ansset? he asked, and one of the guards answered, I'll get him.
Don't get him. Tell me where he is.
And the guard cocked his head, listening to the constant stream of reports coming into his ear implant. In the garden. With three guards. Near the river.
Take me to him.
The guards tried not to betray their surprise. Mikal hadn't gone outside the palace in years. But they moved efficiently, and with five guards and an unseen hundred more patrolling the garden, Mikal left the palace and walked to where Ansset sat on the riverbank. Ansset arose when he saw Mikal coming, and they sat together, the guards many meters off, watching carefully, as imperial flits passed overhead.
I feel like an invader, Mikal said. I have to take two guards with me when I take a shit.
The birds of Earth sing beautiful songs, Ansset answered. Listen.
Mikal listened for a while, but his ear was not so finely tuned as Ansset's, and he grew impatient.
There are plots within plots, Mikal said. Sing to me of the plans and plots of foolish men.
So Ansset sang to him a story he had heard only a few days before from a biochemist working in poison control. It was about an ancient researcher who had finally succeeded in crossing a pig with a chicken, so that the creature could lay ham and eggs together, saving a great deal of time at breakfast. The animals lay plenty of eggs, and they were all the researcher had hoped they'd be. The trouble was, the eggs didn't hatch, so the animal couldn't reproduce. The blunt-snouted pickens (or chigs?) couldn't break the eggs, and so the experiment failed. Mikal was amused, and felt much better. But you know, Ansset, there was a solution. He should have taught them to screw out with their tails.
But Mikal's face soon grew sour again, and he said, My days are numbered, Ansset. Sing to me of numbered days. For all his attempts, Ansset had never understood mortality in the way the old understand it. So he had to sing Mikal's own feelings on the matter back to him. They were no comfort at all. But at least Mikal knew that he was understood, and he felt better as he lay in the grass, watching the Susquehanna rush by.
13
We have to take Ansset along. He's the only one who might recognize anyone.
I won't have any chance of Ansset being taken away from me again.
The Chamberlain was stubborn on this point. I don't want to leave it to chance. There are too many ways evidence can be destroyed.
Mikal was angry. I won't have the boy caught up in any more of this. He came to Earth to sing, dammit!
Then I refuse to try anything more, the Chamberlain said. I can't accomplish the tasks you set for me if you tie my hands!
Take him, then. But you'll have to take me, too.
You?
Me.
But the security arrangements--
Damn the security arrangements. Nobody expects me to be along on something like this. Surprise is the best security of all.
But, my Lord, you'd be risking your life--
Chamberlain! Before you were born I Had risked my life in far more dangerous circumstances than these! I bet my own life that I could build an empire and I damn near lost the bet a hundred times. We're leaving in fifteen minutes.
Yes, my Lord, said the Chamberlain. He left quickly, to get everything ready, but as he walked out of Mikal's room, he was trembling. He had never dared argue with the emperor that way before. What had he been thinking of? And now the emperor was going with him. If anything happened to Mikal while he was in the Chamberlain's care, the Chamberlain was doomed. No one would agree on anything after Mikal's death except that the Chamberlain must die.
Mikal and Ansset came to the troop flesket together. The soldiers were petrified about going on an operation with the emperor himself. But the Chamberlain noticed that Mikal was buoyant, excited. Probably remembering the glories of past days, the Chamberlain supposed, when he had conquered everybody. Well, he's not much of a conqueror now, and I wish to hell he had let me handle this. One of the dangers of being so close to the center of power-one had to accept the whims of the powerful.
The child, however, seemed to fee! nothing at all. It wasn't the first time the Chamberlain bad envied Ansset his iron self-control. The ability to hide every feeling from one's enemies and friends-they were often indistinguishable-would be a greater weapon than any number of lasers.