Crown of Slaves

carnival.'

'It is, in a way,' Anton replied, his eyes slowly scanning the huge crowd. 'It's been months since Stein died, so even his family has had time to work through most of the grief. Now…'

'It's time to do business,' concluded Ruth. 'I imagine that's what Stein would have wanted himself, when you get right down to it.'

Anton nodded. 'Milk it for all it's worth. Whether or not Stein was a saint, I'll leave for others to decide. What I know for sure is that the man was a slick politician and a superb showman.' He glanced up at the ceiling far above and smiled. 'He'd have loved it. A big top and everything.'

Berry was scrutinizing the ceiling herself. 'Did they really use to make these things out of cloth?'

'They did, indeed, if you go back far enough. Circuses are an ancient form of entertainment, you know. Nowadays, we put up temporary edifices like this using contra grav instead of tent poles, but the original 'big tops' were just gigantic tents, essentially.'

Berry was still dubious. 'How did they hold up the trapezes and highwires and stuff?' She paused for a moment, watching an acrobat making his way gingerly across a highwire suspended far above. 'And how would you even use them anyway, back in the days before contragravity?'

Anton told her. Her eyes grew very wide.

'That's sick.'

He shrugged. 'People still gawk at accidents, you know. And speaking of gawking, I think we've done enough.' He nodded toward a cluster of people gathered on a large dais across the crowded floor. 'It's time to pay our respects.'

Berry and Ruth immediately sidled behind him. A moment later, so did Web Du Havel. 'You lead the way,' commanded his daughter. 'You're the widest. Besides, your best scowl will probably part most of the crowd all by itself.'

Zilwicki looked back at the soldiers from the Queen's Own, momentarily tempted to order them to clear a path. But he dismissed the idea immediately. Lieutenant Griggs' squad wasn't even paying attention to him, their eyes continually scanning the crowd looking for threats. They were charged with guarding the princess-which they couldn't do marching ahead of her.

No help for it, then. Anton scowled. Three people standing near him edged away. 'How come I always get the Moses assignment?'

* * *

From a different edge of the mob, Victor and Ginny were facing the same problem.

More precisely, Victor was.

'I still think you'd do better at this,' he groused, trying to nudge someone else aside without precipitating an actual brawl.

'Don't be silly,' countered Ginny, pressed close against his back. 'I'm way too small and-more to the point-my outfit's way too demure. If you'd let me wear the sari I wanted to wear-'

'We'd have both gotten arrested-you for soliciting and me for being a pimp.' His scowl bid fair to rival Anton's. 'In that outfit, you don't have to say a word and you're being obscene.'

'Oh, pfui.' Victor jumped a little as Ginny tickled him. 'You're just a hopeless prude. Back in the Solarian League, that outfit barely gets a glance. Well, maybe two.'

With a deft maneuver, Victor managed to get them past a small clump of people chattering away. Another few meters forward.

'And you're so good at this, anyway. I'll make sure to tell Kevin so he can add that to your dossier.'

'Thanks a lot, Ginny. Thank you so very much.'

* * *

'Thank God we got here early,' whispered Naomi to her uncle, leaning over in her chair to do so. 'I'd hate to be fighting my way through that mob to greet the royal family, instead of already being here on the dais.'

Walter Imbesi let no trace of humor show on his solemn face, when he whispered back. 'Gives you a whole different perspective on Brownian motion, doesn't it? But do try to keep the witticisms under control, if you would.' He made a miniscule nod in the direction of Jessica Stein and her entourage. 'I don't think they'd much appreciate being referred to as the 'royal family.' '

His niece didn't have quite the degree of control Walter did, so a faint trace of distaste was evident on her face. Evident, at least, to someone who knew her well.

'I'm sure they wouldn't, the damn poseurs. Hieronymus Stein may have been a modest saint and an ascetic-I have my doubts, but I admit I'm something of a cynic-but his daughter bears no resemblance to that description.' She cast a quick glance at the woman in question and the people around her. 'Much less her hangers-on.'

'Be charitable, Naomi. They've been patient a long time.'

'No credit to them. As long as Stein was alive, they had to be patient. Now…' She cast another glance, this time at a man leaning over and exchanging some witticism with Jessica Stein.

'I don't like him. Even less than I like her.'

Imbesi's shrug was as minimalist a gesture as his nod had been. 'Neither do I. In fact, since I know a lot more about the man than you do, I'm sure I like him a lot less. But whether you or I like him is neither here nor there. Ingemar Cassetti is the right-hand man of the governor of the nearest Solarian League sector province. That makes him just another rock we've got to deal with.'

'Poor little Erewhon. 'Between a rock and a hard place,' except we've got so many rocks.'

Again, Imbesi made that little nod. 'Many indeed. With Manticore's current government as the hard place allotted to us by the Lord Almighty, for whatever inscrutable reasons He might have.'

He would have sighed, except that Walter Imbesi hadn't sighed in public since he was eight years old. The thrashing he'd received from his father afterward had made sure of that. The informal regimen which the youngsters of Erewhon's central families underwent was severe, for all that it wasn't concerned with the trivial matters that obsessed most of the galaxy's elites.

Sexual mores being one such triviality, as Naomi immediately demonstrated.

'So which one of these clowns do you want me to seduce?' she asked. The very faint smile on her face indicated that the question was asked partly in jest.

Partly.

'I assume your normal rules apply?'

'They certainly do. Rocks and a hard place or not, Erewhon isn't that desperate. I don't insist on Adonis or Venus, but the seducee has to have some appeal to me.'

Imbesi allowed himself a little smile. Naomi's free-wheeling ways tended to irk most members of the family, but he was not one of them. Possibly that was because he was the recognized head of the family, and couldn't afford to overlook any asset. 'In that case, I suspect you'll be enjoying-or not-a very chaste funeral. If there's any man here worth seducing that you'd like to sleep with, I can't think of who it might be. Nor any woman, for that matter.'

Naomi's eyes wandered for a moment. Seeing the direction of her gaze, Imbesi gave his niece a very curtailed-but very abrupt-shake of his head.

'Whatever you do, girl, stay the hell away from Luiz Rozsak. I don't care how pretty he is. You might as well bed with a cobra.'

Naomi's eyes widened just a bit. 'That seems a little rough, Uncle. My impression is that he's less vile-quite a bit less, in fact-than the rest of that Solarian crowd.'

'Who said anything about 'vile'? Cobras aren't vile. They're just deadly.' All trace of banter left his voice. 'Just take my word for it, young lady. Stay away from Luiz Rozsak. That's an order.'

'Okay, okay. You don't have to go all paterfamilias on me about it.'

Her eyes moved slowly across the rest of the small crowd assembled on the dais, narrowing as they went.