March Upcountry

especially when meeting with the informants they maintained among the surrounding tribes, but he was in fact the commander of the Marshad secret police.

“Once again you have avoided having your head lopped off,” the monarch added with a grunt of humor. “One of these days, you won’t be so lucky. That day will be a great pleasure to me. A day of comfort.”

“I live to serve, O King.” The spy knew he was on the edge of the knife, but that was what gave the role spice.

“Of course you do.” The king gave a disbelieving chuckle. “It is a well-known fact, is it not?”

He turned to the commander of the Royal Guard. The commander had been nothing more than a common mercenary before being given his position, and the king had been careful to ensure that plenty of hatred was directed at him. It was one way to ensure the Guard’s total loyalty, for if the king fell, so would the Guard.

“We will continue with the original plan.”

“Yes, O King,” the guard commander replied with a brief glance of fury at the spy. “The forces are at your command.”

“Of course they are,” he whispered. “And with Our mighty army and the power of these humans, We shall rule the world!”

Roger took another bite of the spiced meat. He’d run an analyzer over it and gotten all the usual warning about alkaloids, but it wasn’t poisonous. It just tasted that way.

The locals used a spice that tasted exactly like rancid fennel, and it was apparently wildly popular, because it was in every dish. Roger picked a bit of the purple leaf off the meat and checked. Yep, that was it. He surreptitiously spat, trying to get the rotten taste out of his mouth, then gave up. At least there were only fourteen more courses to go.

The diners were seated on cushions, arranged in pairs and trios around low, three-legged tables. The courses were borne in by silent servants, and the empty platters were borne back out picked over or finished off. Most of the diners were members of the Marshad court, but there were also some representatives from other city- states. They were neither exactly ambassadors nor simple visitors, but seemed to occupy some place in between.

Roger was seated with two such representatives near the king. He had initially engaged them in desultory conversation, but they’d rapidly dropped into a complex discussion of trading futures that drifted first out of Roger’s interest, and eventually out of the local dialect. Since then, the prince had occupied himself picking at his food and observing the dinner party.

He looked over at Pahner. The captain was seated on a cushion, legs crossed as if he’d been born to this society, calmly chewing and swallowing the horrible food and nodding as if he actually heard every word his seat mate was saying. As always, the Marine was the perfect diplomat, and Roger sighed. He was never going to be that good.

Eleanora had stopped eating after only a couple of mouthfuls, but she could excuse that on the basis of the steady conversation she’d been maintaining with both her table mates. The chief of staff was doing her usual job of probing every nuance of the local culture, dissecting it as a biologist would dissect an invertebrate.

He didn’t look over his shoulder, but he knew the Marines were standing at the ready. They lined the wall at his back, weapons at low port and ready for instant use if it dropped in the pot.

He felt mildly naked without the additional presence of Cord, but the shaman lacked the nanites of his human companions and was still recovering from the terrible shrapnel wounds he’d taken in Voitan. Whatever might happen, the shaman would have to ride it out from a pile of cushions in the visitors’ quarters.

Everyone was still as nervous as cats in a roomful of float-chairs. Including, unless he was much mistaken, Radj Hoomas.

The king sat at the head of the room, with his back to the large double doors leading into one of his many throne rooms. He was surrounded, literally, by guards and hard to observe through the obscurement of the armored behemoths. From what Roger could see of him, however, he, too, was picking at his food, speaking occasionally with the armored commander seated beside him and glancing nervously around the room. It might be a victory party, but the host didn’t look very victorious.

“The Prince isn’t eating!” the king whispered angrily.

“He’s eaten enough,” Mirzal Pars responded. The old mercenary clapped his hands and grunted in humor. “They’re so smart, but they don’t even recognize miz poison. It may be tasteless, but you can see the leaves clearly. Everyone knows about it . . . except these humans.” He grunted another laugh.

“But will it be enough?” Radj Hoomas demanded. The plan had to be executed flawlessly, for the power of these humans was terrifying to contemplate. Holding onto it would be like holding an atul by the tail.

“It will be enough. They’ve all eaten more than a large enough dose. If we withhold the antidote, they’ll die within a day.”

“And the guards are ready?”

“Assuredly,” the commander chuckled. “They look forward to it.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

The celebration had moved into the throne room, where the king presided over the conversation swirling around him from his throne. Much of the court had excused itself after the dinner, pleading the excuse of work to complete, and the majority of the room was sparsely filled with the prince’s party and the representatives from the surrounding city-states.

Eleanora sipped from a cup of warm, flat water and squinted at the representative from Pasule.

“The king is the sole landowner?” she asked incredulously. Even in the most despotic regimes in Earth’s history, power had been more diffuse than that.

“Yes. Radj Hoomas owns not only the agricultural land, but all of the buildings of the town, and all of the houses of the Council outside the city wall.” The representative, Jedal Vel, was short for a Mardukan, but he still towered over the chief of staff. She’d ended up talking exclusively to him after finding him a mine of information. The “simple trader” from Pasule was a student not only of commerce, but of government and history. He was, naturally, biased towards Pasule’s oligarchical form of government, but having Marshad as a horrible counterexample would tend to do that.

“Two generations ago, in the chaos after the fall of Voitan, there was a great rebellion among the Houses of Marshad. Three of them were the most prominent, and the king of that time, Radj Kordan, Radj Hoomas’ grandfather, allied with one of them against the other two. It was a terrible battle, but the king finally prevailed over all but his single surviving ally. Most unfortunately, he was, in turn, assassinated shortly after the end of the war by a son of one of the defeated Houses. He had intended simply to reduce their power, fine them heavily, and strip them of guards, but his son, Hoomas’ father, killed every member of the defeated Houses. Then he forced a marriage with a daughter of the single surviving ally, and absorbed that House, leaving the House of Radj as the only power in Marshad.”

The representative sipped his wine and gave a lower handclap, a Mardukan shrug.

“Pasule’s actions in this were not the best. We supported both sides, trying to drag the war out and damage Marshad as much as possible. We’ve always seen the city as a rival, and since the fall of Voitan it’s come to war more than once. But when Radj consolidated all the power under itself, it was clear we’d made a serious mistake. Since then, Radj has taken more and more power and treasure, and left less and less for others.

“The only thing that Marshad exports anymore is dianda, but it makes a tremendous profit on it. The crop is hard to grow, and takes up valuable land which might otherwise be used to grow food. Naturally, Radj Hoomas could care less. The land produces barely enough food to support the farmers; the city poor are left to starve and work the looms.”