Those toads from Sununuway, said the Chamberlain, "will be madder than hell. He chuckled.
They were picturesque, after a fashion, their hair piled high with bones and decorations holding it all in place, vast piles of beads across their chests and only the tiniest of loincloths keeping them decent. But picturesque or not, Mikal was bored with them already and signaled for wine.
The Chamberlain poured, tasted it, as was the custom, and then took a step toward Mikal's throne. Then he stopped, beckoned to Ansset. Surprised at the summons, Ansset came to him.
Why don't you take the wine to Mikal, Sweet Songbird? the Chamberlain said. The surprise fell away from Ansset's eyes, and he took the wine and headed purposefully toward Mikal's throne.
At that moment, however, pandemonium broke loose.
The Kinshasan envoys reached into their elaborate headdresses and withdrew wooden knives-which had passed the metal detectors and the frisking-and rushed toward the throne. The guards fired quickly, their lasers dropping five of the Kinshasans, but all had aimed at the foremost assassins, and three continued unharmed. They raced on toward the throne, arms extended so the knives were already aimed directly at Mikal's heart. There were shouts and screams. A guard managed to shift his aim and get off a shot, but it was wild, and the others had exhausted their charges on the first shot. They were struggling to recharge their lasers, but knew even as they tried that they would be too late, that nothing would be fast enough to stop the wooden knives from reaching Mikal.
Mikal looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed.
But at that moment Ansset threw the wine goblet at one of the attackers and then leaped out in front of the emperor. He jumped easily into the air and kicked the jaw of the first of the attackers. The angle of the kick was perfect, the force sharp and incredibly hard, and the Kinshasan's head flew fifty feet away into the crowd, as his body slid forward until the wooden knife still clutched in his hand touched Mikal's foot. Ansset came down from the jump in time to bring his hand upward into the abdomen of another attacker so sharply that his arm was buried to the elbow in bowels, and his fingers crushed the man's heart.
The third attacker paused just a moment, thrown from his relentless charge by the sudden onslaught from the child who had stood so harmlessly by the emperor's - throne. That pause was long enough for recharged lasers to be aimed, to flash, and the last Kinshasan assassin fell, dropping ashes as he collapsed, flaming slightly.
The whole thing, from the appearance of the wooden knives to the fall of the last attacker, had taken five seconds.
Ansset stood still in the middle of the hall, gore on his arm, blood splashed all over his body. He looked at the gory hand, at the body he had pulled it out of. A rush of long-blocked memories came back, and he remembered other such bodies, other heads kicked from torsos, other men who had died as Ansset learned the skill of killing with his hands. The guilt that had troubled him when he awakened in the evenings on the boat swept through him now with greater force than ever, for now he knew why he felt it, what the guilt was for.
The searches had all been in vain. The precautions were meaningless. Ansset could not have used a weapon, did not need a weapon-Ansset was the weapon that was to have been used against Father Mikal.
The smell of blood and broken intestines combined with the emotions sweeping his body. He would have vomited. Longed to vomit. But Control asserted itself-it had been instilled in him for such unbearable moments as this. And he stood, his face an impassive mask, waiting.
The guards approached him carefully, unsure what they should do.
But the Chamberlain was sure. Ansset heard the voice, trembling with fear at how close the assassination had come and how close Mikal had been to assassination ever since Ansset had been restored to him, as the Chamberlain shouted, Keep him under guard. Wash him. Never let him be out of a laser's aim for a moment. Then bring him to the council chamber in an hour.
The guards looked toward Mikal, white-faced and shaken on the throne, and he nodded to them.
17
Mikal sat staring into the fire, remembering the first man he had ever killed. Mikal had been a mere child, only ten, younger than Ansset-no. Mustn't think of Ansset.
Only ten, and upstairs asleep. It was in the years of terror on the worlds of the Helping Walk, and that night it was their turn. There was no knock on the door, no sound outside, just the crash of the door blowing in, the scream of Mikal's mother, who had not yet gone to bed, the shriek of Mikal's sister as she awakened across the small room from him. Mikal had not had to wonder what it was. He was only ten, but such things could not be kept from children in those years, and he had seen the women's corpses, taken apart and strewn along the street; had seen the male genitals nailed to the walls as the corpse of the man who had owned them leaned below them, leering madly at the fire that had turned his bowels to ashes.
The marauders traveled in small groups, and were said to be irresistible, but Mikal knew where the hunting gun was kept and how to aim it true. He found it in his parents' room, loaded it carefully while his mother kept on screaming downstairs, and then waited patiently while two sets of footsteps came up the stairs. He would have only one shot, but if he chose the right moment, it would be enough-the gun was strong enough to shove a charge through one man and kill another behind him.
The men loomed at the top of the stairs. Mikal had no angst at the thought of killing. He fired. The recoil of the gun knocked him down. When he got up, the two men were gone, having tumbled down the stairs. Still his poise did not leave him. He loaded again, then walked carefully to the top of the stairs. At the bottom, two men knelt over the corpses, then looked up. If Mikal had hesitated, they would have killed him-lasers are quicker than any projectile, and these men knew how to use them. But Mikal did not hesitate. He fired again, and this time held his ground against the recoil, watching as the two men dropped from the explosion as the shell hit one man in the head. It was a lucky shot-Mikal had been aiming for the other man's belly. It made no difference. Both were dead.
Mikal did not know how he would get down the stairs under fire to finish off the rest, but he intended to try. It turned out that he didn't need to. His father was being held, forced to watch as the second man began raping his wife. When four of the marauders were suddenly dead, Mikal's father didn't hesitate to tell the other three, You haven't got a chance. There are four of them upstairs and another dozen outside.
They believed him; but they were marauders, and so they slit his throat to the bone, and stabbed Mikal's mother eight times, and only then did they turn their lasers on themselves, knowing that there would be no mercy if they surrendered, not even a trial, just the brief ceremony of tearing them to pieces. Mikal's father died even as they did. But Mikal's mother lived. And at the age of ten Mikal became something of a hero. He organized the villages into a strong resisting force, and when the word spread that no marauders could get into that village, other villages pleaded with Mikal to lead them, too, though he was just a child. By the age of fifteen, he had forced the marauders to accept a treaty that, in essence, kept them from landing on Mikal's planet, and over the next few years Mikal taught them that he had the power and the will to enforce it.
Yet in the moments when he first came downstairs and saw the four men he had killed, saw his father gouting blood through the gaping smile in his throat, saw three charred corpses already stinking of half-cooked meat, saw his mother lying naked on the floor with a knife in her breast, he had felt an agony that powered all his actions ever since. Even remembering that night left him sweating, more than a century later. And at first it had been hate that propelled him, forced him to take a fleet out to the marauders' own worlds and subdue them, brought him to the head of a strong, tough group of men all older than him and willing to follow him to hell.