(How much easier for everyone it would have been, I suppose, if we had set the Empire up as a hereditary monarchy in the first place. The heir apparent known to all, well in advance. None of this nasty fear of a chaotic interregnum. Plenty of time for the bureaucrats on whose shoulders the whole system really rests to scope out the new man and get some sense of how to keep him under control, so that everything would go purring along the right way after the shift in power.)
(Easier all around, yes. But very stupid, too, and in the long run catastrophic. The history of hereditary monarchies tells us that it's just like rolling dice-you can get hot and have five or eight good throws in a row, but you can't do it forever, and sooner or later you're absolutely certain to crap out. History is littered with the rusting wreckage of dynastic monarchies. Gaje history, that is. Since the beginning of time we Rom have had sense enough to rely on elected leaders only.)
Among the contenders in the struggle coming up in the Imperium, Sunteil was most to my liking. There was the old devil in that man. You could see the wickedness in his eyes, the shine, the sparkle. Sunteil was a man of Fenix in Haj Qaldun, Chorian's home world, a place of tawny desert sands and steady unremitting heat. If the heat of Fenix doesn't drive you crazy, it makes you sharp and glistening. Among the Rom of the Kingdom there is a saying, Count your teeth three times when it's a Fenixi that you kiss. Sunteil was of that sort. Dark and devious. My kind of man. He could almost have been Rom, that one.
Julien had chosen to throw in his lot with Periandros. I couldn't see it. That drab little bookkeeper! Not Julien's sort of person at all. What had Periandros done to buy him-promise Julien that he would construct a new France for him somewhere, and set him up as its king?
Sidri Akrak was Periandros' native planet, a world where shaggy monsters with nightmare faces run screaming down the streets of the cities, things with black fangs and red wattles, with bulging fiery eyes the size of saucers, with horns that branch a thousand times and turn into devilish stinging tentacles at their tips. Visitors to Sidri Akrak, if they aren't warned, sometimes have total nervous breakdowns in the first fifteen minutes. And yet the Akrakikan take their monstrositiles utterly casually, as though they were nothing more than dogs or cats. That's how they are: souls of bookkeepers. Nothing reaches them. They have no blood and no balls and nothing in their heads but some kind of clicking chattering arrangement of gears, or so it seems to me. How I despise them! And Periandros was an Akraki of the Akrakikan, the pure item. I have known robots with greater passion in a single swivel joint than he had in his entire body. Yet he had been favored by the Fifteenth Emperor and lifted up out of obscurity within reach of the throne. Now it seemed he might actually attain it. I don't know: maybe something like Periandros is the sort of creature best suited to reign in the GaJe Imperium. There have been Akraki emperors before and they were not the worst. I suppose the Gaje get the kind of emperors they deserve.
And Naria. The youngest; I knew him least well of the three. A man native to Vietoris who wore his skin in the deepest of purple hues and his hair a flaming scarlet, cascading to his shoulders. He appeared too cold and calculating for my taste. Don't misunderstand me-a little calculation is all right; we are all calculating; but coldness is another matter. Perhaps I was prejudiced against him because of his Vietoris origins, my own home world, in a manner of speaking, except that it was never "home" to me, simply the place where I happened to be born -into slavery-and where I was taken from my father and sold again before I knew anything of anything. It's hard for me to think of Vietoris or any of its Gaje folk without shuddering, though they tell me it's a gentle lovely world. Lord Naria of Vietoris might have many kindly traits glinting like buried treasure somewhere deep within his soul, but I had never seen evidence of them, and I wished him chilly luck in the contest that lay ahead.
Sunteil, Periandros, Naria. If I returned to the Empire, could I influence the choice? Should I? Would I? Julien de Gramont was right that I should care about the coming struggle. Who rules the Imperium is a matter that concerns Rom as much as it concerns GaJe: we share one galaxy, after all. And only a fool would think that it is possible to separate the interests of the Rom in any real way from the interests of the Gaje; the two races are interdependent, and we know that all too well. Which is why we Rom set up the Empire in the first place.
(Try to get a GaJo to believe that! But why would we want to try?) "Well, and in the end will you return?" Julien asked.
We had eaten and eaten and we had eaten some more, and now he had drawn a flask of fine old gold-flecked cognac of Galgala from the overpocket and it was sliding into us with no difficulty at all. But I had learned when I was not much more than a boy, living in the elegant palace of Loiza la Vakako, how to keep my brains from flowing out as the alcohol flows in.
"Votre sante," I cried, lifting my glass to him.
He lifted his. "Horses and wealth," he said in good Romany. We drank. I signalled that he should fill the glasses again. "Splendor and grace," he said.
"Joy and mischief," I responded. "Delights and delicacies!" "Deviltry and debauchery!"
"At your age," he said. "You are a rogue, Yakoub!"
"Ah, no. I am a very prosaic person, within myself I am as dull as your Lord Periandros, my friend. Shall we drink one more and say that the feast is over?"
"Why won't you go back to the Empire?" he asked one more time. "You've been away five years. Is that not enough?"
"It doesn't seem that way to me."
"Chaos will descend when the emperor dies. Can you allow that to happen?"
"How can I prevent it? Anyway, sometimes chaos is a thing to be desired. "
"Not by me, Yakoub."
"You are a sweet man, Julien, but you are a Gajo. There are many things you don't understand. I will stay here, I think."
"How much longer?" "Until it is time to go." "The time is now, Yakoub."
I shrugged. "Let the chaos come. It's not my affair."
"How can you say that, Yakoub? You, a man of honor, of responsibility, a king-"
"Former king, Julien." I rose and stretched and yawned. "We've been eating and drinking half the night. The stars come and go in the sky. Shall we say this is enough, and say goodnight?" It was not like me ever to say that anything was enough; but perhaps I was changing. Perhaps I was starting to grow old. Could that be? No. No, I didn't think so. Perhaps it was simply that I had grown weary of defending myself against Julien's persistence.
He stared at me for a long while without answering.
Then he said in a soft voice, and in Romany without flaw, "I forgive you and may God forgive you."
I was stunned by that. Those are words that are spoken among us at the time when consciences are settled, words that are said to a dying man or by a dying man by way of clearing all accounts. Did Julien know that? He must. He had been close to Rom much of his life. Surely he knew what we meant when we said those words. Te aves yertime mandar! I forgive you! He frightened and troubled me with those words as I had rarely been frightened or troubled in my long life.
"One last drink?" he said, after a time.
"I think we have had enough for one night," I replied.
JULIEN STAYED WITH ME ANOTHER THREE DAYS, FIVE, ten, something like that. He could have stayed a month, or forever, if he had wanted to. We were very careful about what we talked about. Mostly we talked about food, which was always a safe subject. We went out hunting or fishing every day and came back with sleds laden with the creatures of Mulano, and in the evenings Julien prepared whatever we had caught in the classic French manner, explaining every step to me as he worked.