Sikander glances over at Devindar, and their eyes meet. The dark look in Devindar’s face tells Sikander that his brother is wondering the same thing. Devindar has made no secret of his attraction to the supposedly less radical elements of the KLP for four or five years now … but for the first time Sikander wonders where his loyalties lie.
Devindar does not answer Nawab Dayan. He straightens his shoulders, holds their father’s gaze for a moment, then turns and strides out the door without looking back.
Six hours after the argument in the command center, Sikander boards the warp liner for High Albion.…
That was the moment the breach between Devindar and Father became irreparable, Sikander reflected. His father hadn’t allowed Sikander to return to Kashmir until he’d graduated from the Academy. It was four and a half years before he saw either of them again. By then, everything was different.
Darvesh tapped him on the shoulder. “The amira,” he murmured. The Kashmiri sergeant nodded at the far corner of the room. Ranya stood there, arms folded as she watched the chaos unfolding on the screens. Her olive Montréalais-style skirt suit was probably the closest she could come to being in uniform.
“Of course,” said Sikander. “Thank you, Darvesh.” He dismissed the old memories, focusing on what was going on around him this very moment, and followed Tarek Zakur across the room. The two of them joined Ranya by the displays.
Ranya glanced around as they approached. “Captain Zakur, you’re back! And I see you brought Lieutenant North, too.”
“He insisted, Amira,” Zakur answered. He bowed, then took a sudden interest in one of the vid feeds nearby.
“Concerned for me?” Ranya asked Sikander with a small smile.
“Well, yes,” Sikander replied. He nodded at the chaos on the vidscreens. “I wouldn’t have left you on Socotra if I had realized that all this was about to break loose.”
“I wouldn’t have headed off to Socotra in the first place,” Ranya replied. “Then again, I succeeded in confusing Bey Salem’s forces. A squadron of flyers carrying his soldiers landed at the villa an hour ago, looking for me.”
“Salem el-Fasi?” Sikander asked. “Is he the one behind the troop column moving in from the port?”
“His troops are hanging back for the moment, probably hoping the mob outside our gates will break in and overrun the palace. But yes, el-Fasi just issued a global broadcast to the effect that he has been forced to step in and restore order.” Ranya pointed at a screen showing a slow-moving aerial view from rooftop height, following the progress of troops riding light armor. Her face tightened, and for an instant Sikander caught a glimpse of the anger and anxiety she kept carefully hidden. “He spent years insisting he wanted nothing more than to protect me and telling me what a great man my father was. I knew there was a whiff of rottenness to all that attention he showered on me.”
“I am sorry, Ranya,” he said. He studied the image of el-Fasi’s column, working through the pieces of the puzzle. He’d assumed that local involvement in the Oristani Caravan’s arms smuggling was more or less incidental. After all, it seemed likely that the Dremish agent Bleindel would have selected the spaceport and freight-handling services that best suited his needs for moving contraband into Gadira without attracting too much attention. But if this Bey Salem was in position to move on the palace today, he must have known what the Caidist sympathizers in Tanjeer planned to do days in advance. That suggested coordination between the bey and the rebels.
The dark look on Sikander’s face caught Ranya’s attention. “What is it?” she asked him.
“Is there any chance that Salem el-Fasi is secretly allied to the insurgents and Caidists?”
“It’s almost unthinkable. He made a vast fortune partnering with offworld business and modernizing our industries, which put many of the urban extremists out of work.” Ranya nodded at the images of the el-Fasi forces. “Look, you can see there that insurgents are harassing his soldiers. They are angry with the sultanate, but they hate the beys and what they stand for.”
“Then this isn’t about the Caidists, and it isn’t about an el-Fasi coup,” said Sikander. “It’s about Dremark taking control of Gadira. They’ve been supplying arms shipments to insurgents through el-Fasi’s ports with one hand, and preparing el-Fasi to overthrow you with the other.”
“Dremark?” Ranya looked at him. “All the arms our soldiers have recovered from rebel caches have been of Cygnan manufacture. Why do you think Dremark is involved?”
“I ran into the Dremish consul in the warehouse at Meknez. Well, to be honest, he did his best to run into me. He almost flattened me with a heavy ground transport.” Sikander smiled grimly. “I’m afraid he escaped, but I got a good look at him as he drove off. It was definitely Bleindel.”
“Otto Bleindel?”
Sikander glanced at her. “You’ve met him?”
“He has been working with Salem el-Fasi, passing himself off as a trade representative.” She thought furiously for a moment. “God is merciful! That explains everything. The Dremish manufactured the crisis so that Bey Salem could launch a coup. And once he takes power…”
“… they’ll negotiate with their puppet for whatever they want in Gadira,” Sikander finished her thought. The Republic of Montréal might not be willing to commit thousands of soldiers to an effort to pacify the insurgents and prop up the el-Nasirs, but the Empire of Dremark had no such reservations. They only needed a plausible reason to intervene. The real question was what part the Dremish cruiser and troop carrier in orbit were intended to play, and whether or not anything could be done about it. “Damn. I need to tell the captain.”
“Protesters are massing by the east gate,” one of the guards announced, listening to a headset. “Lieutenant Imamovic reports that his platoon is taking mag-rifle fire from snipers hidden in the crowd. He requests instructions.”
Ranya hurried to peer over the man’s shoulder at the console he was watching. Sikander followed her; the screen showed one of the gates leading into the palace grounds. A thin line of Royal Guards—these men wore dappled sand-olive camouflage, not the black-and-scarlet dress uniforms worn inside the palace—sheltered behind a barricade near the fence, rifles at the ready. Outside, a mob of hundreds, perhaps thousands, shouted and shook their fists. A constant shower of rocks and debris sailed over the fence, pelting the palace grounds.
“Do not fire on the crowd,” Ranya ordered. “Nonlethal defenses only. I won’t have this turn into a massacre.”
“Amira, that may not be up to you,” Captain Zakur said, standing close behind her. “If the crowd breaches the gate and you are still here, we will have no choice but to employ all means necessary to defend your person. You should think about moving to a safer location.”
“If we surrender the palace, then Bey Salem will be happy to liberate it for us,” said Ranya. “El-Badi is a crucial symbol of the sultan’s power. We cannot allow it to fall into his hands.”
“If we allow you to fall into the hands of the Caidists or el-Fasi’s forces, the status of the palace becomes irrelevant,” Zakur said. “Please, consider—”
“Intruders on the grounds!” One of the guards monitoring another set of security feeds slapped an alarm button and pointed. “Sunrise Park, sector three! They drove a ground car through the fence!”
Zakur spun around to study the camera the guard pointed at. Sikander couldn’t make out much more than a stalled-out ground car—more of a truck, really—with smoke spewing from its engine compartment, and a rush of protesters. Some waved pistols or combat rifles, but many were armed with nothing more than sickle-shaped swords or curved daggers. The Gadiran captain keyed his comms. “Reserve platoon to Sunrise Park at once!” he ordered. “Seal that breach!”