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  “Back one step and volley!” Raj shouted, hoarse with smoke and dust.

  Around him the shattered ranks firmed. Colonial dragoons in crimson djellabas rode forward, reins in their teeth as they worked the levers of their repeating carbines. The muzzles of their dogs snaked forward, then recoiled from the line of bayonets.

  BAM. Ragged, but the men were firing in unison.

  “Back one step and volley!” Raj shouted again.

  He fired his revolver between two of the troopers, into the face of a Colonial officer who yipped and waved his yataghan behind the line of dragoons. The carbines snapped, and the man beside Raj stumbled back, moaning and pawing at the shattered jaw that dangled on his breast.

  “Hold hard, 5th Descott! Back one step and volley.”

  Raj blinked back to an awareness of the polished sphere that was Center’s physical being. That had been too vivid: not just the holographic image that the ancient computer projected on his retina; he could still smell the gunpowder and blood.

  if you had not struck swiftly and hard, the wars would have dragged on for years. deaths would have been a whole order of magnitude greater, among soldiers of both sides and among the civilians. as well, entire provinces would be so devastated as to be unable to sustain civilized life.

  Images flitted through their minds: bones resting in a ditch, hair still fluttering from the skulls of a mother and child; skeletal corpses slithering over each other as men threw them on a plague-cart and dragged it away down the empty streets of a besieged city; a room of hollow-eyed soldiers resting on straw pallets slimed with the liquid feces of cholera.

  “That’s true enough for a computer,” Raj said.

  Even then, Thom noted the irony. He was East Residence born, a city patrician, and back when they both believed computer meant angel he’d doubted their very existence. That had shocked Raj’s pious country-squire soul; Raj never doubted the Personal Computer that watched over every faithful soul, and the great Mainframes that sat in glory around the Spirit of Man of the Stars. Now they were both agents of such a being.

  Raj’s voice grew loud for a moment. “That’s true enough for the Spirit of Man of the Stars made manifest, true enough for God. I’m not God, I’m just a man—and I’ve done the Spirit’s work without flinching. But I’d be less than a man if I didn’t think I deserve death for it.” Silence fell.

  “They ought to hate me,” he whispered, his eyes still seeing visions without need of Center’s holographs. “I’ve left the bones of my men all the way from the Drangosh to Carson Barracks, across half a world . . . they ought to hate my guts.”

  they do not, Center said. instead—

  A group of men swaggered into an East Residence bar, down the stairs from the street and under the iron brackets of the lights, into air thick with tobacco and sweat and the fumes of cheap wine and tekkila. Like most of those inside, they wore cavalry-trooper uniforms—it was not a dive where a civilian would have had a long life expectancy—but most of theirs carried the shoulder-flashes of the 5th Descott Guards, and they wore the red-and-white checked neckerchiefs that were an unofficial blazon in that unit. They were dark close-coupled stocky-muscular men, like most Descotters; with them were troopers from half a dozen other units, some of them blond giants with long hair knotted on the sides of their heads.

  There was a general slither of chairs on floors as the newcomers took over the best seats. One Life Guard trooper who was slow about vacating his chair was dumped unceremoniously on the sanded floor; half a dozen sets of eyes tracked him like gun turrets turning as he came up cursing and reaching for the knife in his boot. The Life Guardsman looked over his shoulder, calculated odds, and pushed out of the room. The hard-eyed girl who’d been with him hung over the shoulder of the chair’s new occupant. The men hung their sword belts on the backs of their chairs and called for service.

  “T’Messer Raj,” one said, raising a glass. “While ‘e’s been a-leadin’ us, nivver a one’s been shot runnin’ away!”

  — they do not hate you. they fear you, for they know you will expend them without hesitation if necessary. but they know raj whitehall will lead from the front, and that with him they have conquered the world.

  “Then they’re fools,” Raj said flatly.

  “They’re men,” Thom said. “All men die, whether they go for soldiers or not. But maybe you’ve given them something that makes the life worth it, just as you have Center’s Plan to rebuild civilization throughout the universe.”

  They exchanged the embrahzo again. Thom stepped back and froze, his body once again in Center’s timeless stasis.

  Raj turned and took a deep breath. “Can’t die deader than dead,” he murmured to himself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The great corridor outside the Audience Hall shone with the delicate colored marble and semiprecious stone that made up the intaglio work of the floor. The walls were arched windows on the outer side, and religious murals on the inner—icons of the Saints, lives of the martyrs, stars, starships, Computers calling forth Order from Primeval Chaos. Though the day was overcast, hidden gaslights threw a bright radiance through mirrors.

  Soldiers in the black uniforms and black breastplates of the Life Guards stood along the walls every few paces, rifles at port; officers had their swords drawn and the points resting at their boots. The uniforms were Capital-crisp, but the faces under the plumed helmets were closed and watchful—square beak-nosed faces, dark and hard, on men slightly bowlegged from riding as soon as they could walk. The Life Guards were recruited from the Barholm family estates back in Descott county, from vakaros and yeoman-tenant rancheros. When Descotters ate a man’s salt they took the responsibilities seriously, in the main.

  Suzette adjusted Raj’s cravat, beneath the high wing collar of the dress-uniform jacket. There was a fixed, intent look on her face. Raj recognized it; it was the look you got when the overall situation was completely out of control, so you focused on the immediate skill you could master. Suzette had been brought up in East Residence, and her family had been patrician for fourteen generations. Court etiquette—and the intricate currents of court intrigue—were as much her heritage as the saddle of a war-dog or the hilt of a saber were to him.

  He’d seen the same look on a Brigade trooper’s face, adjusting the grip on his sword and the angle of the blade—as he rode into the muzzle of a cannon loaded with grapeshot.

  Three of his Companions were standing around, with similar expressions. They were looking at the Life Guards, and figuring the odds on a firefight if an order came through to arrest Raj on the spot. Not good, he thought.

  “Relax,” he said quietly. “There isn’t going to be any trouble here today.”

  The party around Raj Whitehall stood in a bubble of social space, lower-ranking courtiers and messengers either avoiding their eyes or staring fascinated at the famous General Whitehall; for the last time, if rumor was correct. Many of them were probably thinking how lucky they were never to have risen so high. The stalk that stood out above the others was the first to be lopped off.

  Which is why the Civil Government doesn’t rule the whole Earth, as it should, Raj thought with an old, cold anger.

  correct, Center replied. Then it added pedantically: bellevue. earth will come later.

  The crowd parted as a man came through. He wasn’t particularly imposing; no more than twenty-one or so, and slimly handsome. His left arm ended at a leather cup and steel hook where the hand should have been. His uniform was standard issue for Civil Government cavalry, blue swallowtail coat and loose maroon breeches, crimson sash under the Sam Browne belt; all tailored with foppish care, but travel-worn and stained with sea salt in places. He carried his round bowl helmet with the chainmail neck-guard and twin captain’s stars tucked under his left arm. The right fist snapped to his chest as he saluted, then bowed to Suzette.

  “Messer Raj,” he said. “My lady Whitehall.” A smile as he glanced past them to the other Companions. “Dog-brother
s.”

  “Spirit,” Raj said mildly, shaken out of his strait preoccupation with what would probably happen in the next half-hour. “I thought you were back in the Western Territories with the 5th, Bartin.”

  Not to mention with Colonel Gerrin Staenbridge; Bartin Foley had gotten into the 5th as Gerrin’s protégé-cum-boyfriend. He was far more than that now, of course.

  “Administrator Historiomo decided,” the young officer said, voice carefully neutral, “that since the Brigade survivors in the Western Territories were cooperating fully, a number of units were surplus to garrison needs.”

  “Which units?” Raj said.

  Bartin cleared his throat. “The 5th Descott Guards,” he said.

  Raj’s Own, as they liked to call themselves.

  “The 7th Descott Rangers, 1st Rogor Slashers, Poplanich’s Own, and the 18th Komar Borderers,” he went on.

  The cavalry units most closely associated with Raj, and the ones commanded by the men who’d become his Companions, the elite group of close comrades he relied on most.

  “In addition, the 17th Kenden County Foot, and the 24th Valencia,” he continued.

  Jorg Menyez commanded the 17th: a Companion, and the Civil Government’s best infantry specialist, able to turn the despised foot soldiers into fighting men of sorts. The 24th . . . Ferdihando Felasquez. Good man . . .

  “And last but not least, the 1st and 2nd Mounted Cruisers.”

  Recruited from the defeated barbarians of the Squadron, after Raj crushed them in a single month’s campaign back in the Southern Territories, three years ago. They’d always been warriors; under civilized instruction, they’d also become quite capable soldiers. The commander of the 1st Cruisers, Ludwig Bellamy, had made the same transition; but as a Squadrone nobleman he also regarded himself as Raj’s personal liegeman. Tejan M’Brust, the Descotter Companion who’d taken over the 2nd Cruisers, probably thought the same way—although he wasn’t supposed to, being a civilized man.

  “They’re all,” Bartin went on, with a slight smile, bowing over Suzette’s hand, “on their way back. Together with the field artillery. I came ahead on one of the steam rams, but everyone should be here in a day or three, if the weather stays fine.”

  Beside Raj, Colonel Dinnalsyn pricked up his ears. The artillery specialist had hated being separated from his beloved weapons. He’d trained those crews himself.

  Joy, Raj thought. It just happened to look like Raj’s own personal army was heading back to the East Residence at flank speed.

  Antin M’lewis cracked his fingers. “What happen t’Chivrez?”

  The Honorable Fedherko Chivrez had been sent out to take command of the Western Territories after Raj conquered them—and had arrived to find the Governor’s promising young heir Cabot Clerett dead at Raj’s feet, with a smoking carbine in Raj’s hand.

  Suzette gave him a single cool violet look from her slanted eyes and then turned them away, her face the unreadable mask of an East Residence aristocrat.

  Raj remembered Cabot’s eyes bulging, as Suzette shot him neatly behind the ear, in the instant before his trigger finger would have punched an 11mm pistol round through Raj’s body. Chivrez had seen; Chivrez had been Director of Supply in Komar back five years ago, and had tried to withhold supplies from Raj’s men. Two Companions named Evrard and Kaltin Gruder had run him out a closed window headfirst, then held him while Antin M’lewis started to flay him from the feet up. Raj had gotten the supplies and won the campaign.

  The trouble with that sort of method was the long-term problems. On the other hand, if Raj hadn’t gotten those supplies, his troops would have been wiped out by the Colonials in the desert fighting. You paced yourself to the task, and if the task got done you worried about secondary consequences later.

  “Ah.” Bartin Foley considered the tip of his hook. “Well, Messer Chivrez seems to have betrayed the Governor’s trust and absconded with some of the Brigade’s treasures.”

  observe, Center said.

  A bedroom in the palace of the Generals of the Brigade, in the Western Territories. Chivrez thrashing, his arms and legs held down by four strong men, another pressing a pillow over his face. The stubby limbs thrashed against the bedclothes. After a few minutes they grew still; Ludwig Bellamy wrapped the body in the sheets and hoisted it. Even masked, Raj recognized Gerrin Staenbridge as the one holding open the door.

  The scene shifted, to the swamps outside Carson Barracks. The same men tipped a burlap-wrapped bundle off the deck of a small boat. It vanished with scarcely a splash, weighed down with lengths of chain and a cast-iron roundshot weighing forty kilos. Gerrin raised a meter-diameter blazon of the Brigade’s sunburst banner, crafted in silver and gold with the double lightning flash across it picked out in diamond.

  “Pity,” he murmured. “Not bad work in a garish sort of barbarian way, and it would buy a good many opera tickets and dinners at the Centoyard back home. Ah, well—authenticity.”

  He tossed the disk after the bureaucrat’s body. It sank with a popping bubble of marsh gas. Somewhere off in the swamps a hadrosauroid bellowed.

  Antin M’lewis grinned uneasily as the Companions exchanged glances. They knew, of course . . . but he wasn’t quite sure if Messer Raj knew. They were all of the Messer class by birth themselves; he’d levered himself up into it by hitching his star to Messer Raj’s wagon. Ye takes t’risk a’ fallin’, too, he thought.

  M’lewis had started off as a Bufford Parish bandit, a sheep stealer by hereditary profession, and made even that most lawless part of not-very-lawful Descott County too hot for him. Enlistment had been the alternative to a rope—or a less formal appointment with a knife. He’d met Raj over a little matter of a peasant’s pig gone missing despite a no-foraging order. One look had told him this was a man who had to be either served or killed, and he’d made his decision. It had led him near enough to death more times than he could count, and also to advancement beyond his dreams.

  On the other hand, one of the things that surprised him about gentlemen born was how bad they were at making use of their advantages. There were good points to a rough upbringing. One of them was being able to say the unsayable.

  “Ah, ser,” he suggested, leaning forward and whispering, “what wit’ t’ lads comin’ in s’soon, mebbe we’uns ud better dip out loik—come back wit’ better company inna day er two?”

  Raj spoke in a clear, conversational tone, without looking around: “I’m attending this levee as ordered by the Sovereign Mighty Lord, Captain M’lewis. You may do as you please.”

  M’lewis spat on the intaglio floor. Spirit. Mebbe I should a’ stayed in sheep-stealin’.

  He followed nonetheless; he might have been born a thief, but he’d eaten this man’s bread and salt.

  A metal-shod staff thumped the floor, and the tall bronze panels of the Audience Hall swung open. The gorgeously robed figure of the Janitor—the Court Usher—bowed and held out his staff, topped by the Star symbol of the Civil Government.

  Suzette took Raj’s arm. The Companions fell in behind him, unconsciously forming a column of twos. A Life Guard officer stepped forward.

  “Your weapons, Messers,” he said, his face expressionless.

  Raj made a chopping gesture with his free hand, and the forward rustle of the Companions died. He handed over ceremonial revolver and court sword. This time it was Bartin Foley who whispered in his ear:

  “A company of the 5th arrived with me, sir. If you’re arrested . . .”

  “Captain Foley, the Sovereign Mighty Lord’s orders will be obeyed by all troops under my command—is that clear?”

  observe, Center whispered in his mind. Raj, in a cell, darkness and the flickering light of lanterns. Rifle-fire from the halls outside, flat slapping echoes off the stone, and the turnkey’s shotgun pointed through the bars at Raj’s face, the hammer falling as he jerked the trigger . . .

  “I’ve served my Governor and the Spirit of Man to the best of my ability,” Raj added. “I chose t
o assume that the Governor, upon whom be the blessings of the Spirit always, will see it the same way.”

  The functionary’s voice boomed out with trained precision through the gold-and-niello speaking trumpet:

  “General the Honorable Messer Raj Ammenda Halgern da Luis Whitehall, Whitehall of Hillchapel, Hereditary Supervisor of Smythe Parish, Descott County! His Lady, Suzette Emmaenelle—” None of his other titles, Raj noted. He’d been officially hailed Sword of the Spirit of Man and Savior of the State in this room.

  He ignored the noise, ignored the brilliantly decked crowds who waited on either side of the carpeted central aisle, the smells of polished metal, sweet incense, and sweat. The Audience Hall was two hundred meters long and fifty high, its arched ceiling a mosaic showing the wheeling galaxy with the Spirit of Man rising head and shoulders behind it. The huge dark eyes were full of stars themselves, staring down into your soul.

  Along the walls were automatons, dressed in the tight uniforms worn by Terran Federation soldiers twelve hundred years before. They whirred and clanked to attention, powered by hidden compressed-air conduits, bringing their archaic and quite non-functional battle lasers to salute. The Guard troopers along the aisle brought their entirely functional rifles up in the same gesture.

  The far end of the audience chamber was a hemisphere plated with burnished gold, lit via mirrors from hidden arcs. It glowed with a blinding aura, strobing slightly. The Chair itself stood four meters in the air on a pillar of fretted silver, the focus of light and mirrors and every eye in the giant room. The man enChaired upon it sat with hieratic stiffness, light breaking in metallized splendor from his robes, the bejeweled Keyboard and Stylus in his hands. A tribal delegation was milling about before it, still speaking through its hired interpreter.

  The linguist’s face was professionally bland, but occasionally a look of horror would cross his features as he moved his lips, working out Sponglish equivalents of the mountaineers’ singsong native tongue: