"I have good news, Gurgee," Pequil whispered. He looked up at Gurgeh, who tried hard to look inquisitive. "I have succeeded in obtaining for you a personal introduction to Their Royal Highness The Emperor-Regent Nicosar!"
"I am greatly honoured." Gurgeh smiled.
"Indeed! Indeed! A most singular and exceptional honour!" Pequil gulped.
"So don't fuck up," Flere-Imsaho muttered from behind. Gurgeh looked at the machine.
The crashing noise sounded again, and suddenly, sweeping down the staircase, quickly filling its breadth, a great gaudy wave of people flowed down towards the floor. Gurgeh assumed the one in the lead carrying a long staff was the Emperor — or Emperor-Regent as Pequil had called him — but at the bottom of the stairs that apex stood aside and shouted, "Their Imperial Highness of the College of Candsev, Prince of Space, Defender of the Faith, Duke of Groasnachek, Master of the Fires of Echronedal, the Emperor-Regent Nicosar the first!"
The Emperor was dressed all in black; a medium-sized, serious-looking apex, quite unornamented. He was surrounded by fabulously dressed Azadians of all sexes, including comparatively conservatively uniformed male and apex guards toting big swords and small guns; preceding the Emperor was a variety of large animals, four- and six-legged, variously coloured, collared and muzzled, and held on the end of emerald- and ruby-chained leads by fat, almost naked males whose oiled skins glowed like frosted gold in the ballroom lights.
The Emperor stopped and talked to some people (who knelt when he approached), further down the line on the far side, then he crossed with his entourage to the side Gurgeh was on.
The ballroom was almost totally silent. Gurgeh could hear the throaty breathing of several of the tamed carnivores. Pequil was sweating. A pulse beat quickly in the hollow of his cheek.
Nicosar came closer. Gurgeh thought the Emperor looked, if anything, a little less impressively hard and determined than the average Azadian. He was slightly stooped, and even when he was talking to somebody only a couple of metres away, Gurgeh could hear only the guest's side of the conversation. Nicosar looked a little younger than Gurgeh had expected.
Despite having been advised about his personal introduction by Pequil, Gurgeh nevertheless felt mildly surprised when the blackclothed apex stopped in front of him.
"Kneel," Flere-Imsaho hissed.
Gurgeh knelt on one knee. The silence seemed to deepen. "Oh shit," the humming machine muttered. Pequil moaned.
The Emperor looked down at Gurgeh, then gave a small smile. "Sir one-knee; you must be our foreign guest. We wish you a good game."
Gurgeh realised what he'd done wrong, and went down on the other knee too, but the Emperor gave a small wave with one ringed hand and said, "No, no; we admire originality. You shall greet us on one knee in future."
"Thank you, Your Highness," Gurgeh said, with a small bow. The Emperor nodded, and turned to walk further up the line.
Pequil gave a quivering sigh.
The Emperor reached the throne on the dais, and music started; people suddenly started talking, and the twin lines of people broke up; everybody chattered and gesticulated at once. Pequil looked as though he was about to collapse. He seemed to be speechless.
Flere-Imsaho floated up to Gurgeh. "Please," it said, "don't ever do something like that again." Gurgeh ignored the machine.
"At least you could talk, eh?" Pequil said suddenly, taking a glass from a tray with a shaking hand. "At least he could talk, eh, machine?" He was talking almost too fast for Gurgeh to follow. He sank the drink. "Most people freeze. I think I might have. Many people do. What does one knee matter, eh? What does that matter?" Pequil looked round for the male with the drinks tray, then gazed at the throne, where the Emperor was sitting talking to some of his retinue. "What a majestic presence!" Pequil said.
"Why's he "Emperor-Regent"?" Gurgeh asked the sweating apex.
"Their Royal Highness had to take up the Royal Chain after the Emperor Molsce sadly died two years ago. As second-best player during the last games, Our Worship Nicosar was elevated to the throne. But I have no doubt they will remain there!"
Gurgeh, who'd read about Molsce dying but hadn't realised Nicosar wasn't regarded as a full Emperor in his own right, nodded and, looking at the extravagantly accoutred people and beasts surrounding the imperial dais, wondered what additional splendours Nicosar could possibly merit if he did win the games.
"I'd offer to dance with you but they don't approve of men dancing together," Shohobohaum Za said, coming up to where Gurgeh stood by a pillar. Za took a plate of paper-wrapped sweetmeats from a small table and held it out to Gurgeh, who shook his head. Za popped a couple of the little pastries into his mouth while Gurgeh watched the elaborate, patterned dances surge in eddies of flesh and coloured cloth across the ballroom floor. Flere-Imsaho floated near by. There were some bits of paper sticking to its static-charged casing.
"Don't worry," Gurgeh told Za. "I shan't feel insulted."
"Good. Enjoying yourself?" Za leant against the pillar. "Thought you looked a bit lonely standing here. Where's Pequil?"
"He's talking to some imperial officials, trying to arrange a private audience."
"Ho, he'll be lucky," snorted Za. "What d'you think of our wonderful Emperor, anyway?"
"He seems… very imperious," Gurgeh said, and made a frowning gesture at the robes he was wearing, and tapped one ear.
Za looked amused, then mystified, then he laughed. "Oh; the microphone!" He shook his head, unwrapped another couple of pastries and ate them. "Don't worry about that. Just say what you want. You won't be assassinated or anything. They don't mind. Diplomatic protocol. We pretend the robes aren't bugged, and they pretend they haven't heard anything. It's a little game we play."
"If you say so," Gurgeh said, looking over at the imperial dais.
"Not much to look at at the moment, young Nicosar," Za said, following Gurgeh's gaze. "He gets his full regalia after the game; theoretically in mourning for Molsce at the moment. Black's their colour for mourning; something to do with space, I think." He looked at the Emperor for a while. "Odd set-up, don't you think? All that power belonging to one person."
"Seems a rather… potentially unstable way to run a society," Gurgeh agreed.
"Hmm. Of course, it's all relative, isn't it? Really, you know, that old guy the Emp's talking to at the moment probably has more real power than Nicosar himself."
"Really?" Gurgeh looked at Za.
"Yes; that's Hamin, rector of Candsev College. Nicosar's mentor."
"You don't mean he tells the Emperor what to do?"
"Not officially, but" — Za belched — "Nicosar was brought up in the college; spent sixty years, child and apex, learning the game from Hamin. Hamin raised him, groomed him, taught him all he knew, about the game and everything else. So when old Molsce gets his one way ticket to the land of nod — not before time — and Nicosar takes over, who's the first person he's going to turn to for advice?"
"I see," Gurgeh nodded. He was starting to regret not having studied more on Azad the political system rather than just Azad the game. "I thought the colleges just taught people how to play."
"That's all they do in theory, but in fact they're more like surrogate noble families. Where the Empire gains over the usual bloodline set-up is they use the game to recruit the cleverest, most ruthless and manipulative apices from the whole population to run the show, rather than have to marry new blood into some stagnant aristocracy and hope for the best when the genes shake out. Actually quite a neat system; the game solves a lot. I can see it lasting; Contact seems to think it's all going to fall apart at the seams one day, but I doubt it myself. This lot could outlast us. They are impressive, don't you think? Come on; you have to admit you're impressed, aren't you?"