Conqueror

them.'

'We're used to being despised,' Historiomo said with polite bitterness. 'The military nobility always have; it's find us supplies for twenty thousand men, or why aren't the roads ready? But do they listen when we explain? Never. They worship action at the expense of thought, and think that you can overcome any problem with a sword and willpower. They impose solutions that make problems worse and we have to work around the wreckage. Or a Governor shoots his way to the Chair and then thinks he can order us to do the impossible. We're the ones who have to tell them no.

'The patricians-' he cast a cautious look at Suzette; the urban nobility was her class, and that of Chancellor Tzetzas '-make an art of intrigue and a god of form at the expense of content. They monopolize the great offices of State and plunder them without shame or thought for long-term consequences, and we take the blame. And everybody mocks us, our forms and paperwork, our fussy little precedents. Yet who is it that preserves the institutional memory of the State, who keeps the Civil Government from turning into another feudal hodgepodge of squabbling barons? Who keeps things together and the public services functioning through defeats and civil wars and bad Governors? We do.'

'Agreed,' Raj said.

Historiomo started, cleared his throat and fiddled with his pen-case.

'Messer, I'm called the Sword of the Spirit of Man. That means I know what you can't do with a sword. I'm not the pen, the voice, or the conscience of the Spirit. I'm the Sword; I chop obstacles out of the way; I keep the barbarians from burning the cities around the ears of people like you. I do my job; and when I find someone else who can do his, then I don't care if they're nobleman, patrician, clerk, merchant. Starless Dark, I don't give a damn if they're Colonists or barbs.'

'Most Valiant General,' Historiomo said, rising and neatly stacking his document boxes before fastening them together with a leather strap, 'I won't say it's a pleasure to work with you. Alarming, in fact. But it is a relief, I assure you. Messa Whitehall.'

He bowed deeply and walked out with the strap over his shoulder.

'Well, that'll teach us not to judge a scroll by the winding-stick,' Suzette said. She bent over the crib beneath her table. 'I think this young lady needs to be changed, Fatima.'

When they were alone, she smiled at Raj. 'And what, my darling, is my function with the Sword of the Spirit?'

'You keep him from going completely fucking insane,' Raj said, smiling back.

'So far.'

'So far.'

CHAPTER TEN

'You are all conspiring to drive me mad,' Filip Forker said, pulling off the light ceremonial helmet and throwing it to the floor with a clang. 'Mad, mad!' Shocked murmurs rolled for a moment down the long chamber, until the armored guards along the walls thumped their musket-butts on the floor. Once, twice, three times; when they returned to immobility, the silence was complete.

Attendants closed in around the Brigade monarch; one passed a damp cloth over his face, and another got in a lick with a polishing cloth at the thin silver breastplate the slight little man wore. A minister murmured in his ear; after a while Forker's face set in an expression of petulant resignation, and he sat again.

'Go on, go on.'

Even the high arched ceiling and meter-thick walls of the Primary Audience Hall couldn't take any of the muggy heat out of a Carson Barracks summer. The temperature outside was thirty Celsius, and the city was built out of dark basalt blocks and set in the middle of a swamp; in winter the building would be chilly and dank instead, for all the great arched fireplaces at either end of the Hall. The skylights sent shafts of light ten meters down into hot gloom, with the wings of insects glittering as they crossed from shadow into sun. Very little light or air came in through the narrow slit windows.

The men who had built-ordered the building-of the Hall hadn't exactly intended it as a fortress. If anything, it had originally been designed to hold large assemblies for public address, and incidentally to intimidate petitioners. Standing off attackers had not been far from the builders' minds, though, and ordinary comfort just wasn't something to which they had attached much importance.

The Civil Government embassy rose from their stools below the Seat and bowed, hands on chests.

'If Your Mightiness will deign to examine these documents once again,' their leader began again, with infinite patience. 'Much will be made clear, as clear as the Operating Code of the Spirit.'

His Namerique so perfectly adjusted to upper-class Brigade ears that it was more conspicuous than an accent, coming from a dark clean-shaven man in a long embroidered robe. A gesture suggested the age-yellowed papers on a side table below the Seat without the vulgarity of actually pointing.

'You will see that by agreement between your. . predecessor His Mightiness General Oskar Grakker and the then Admiral of the Squadron Shelvil Ricks, in the time of our Sovereign Lord and Sole Autocrat Laron Poplanich, Governor of the Civil Government of Holy Federation, may the Spirit upload the souls of the worthy dead into Its Nets, the bulk of Stern Isle was granted as dower property to Mindy-Sue Grakker and the heirs of her body and Shelvil Ricks. Which is to say, the Admirals of the Squadron, which is to say-since ex-Admiral Connor Auburn has been persuaded by grace of the Spirit to lay down the unseemly usurped sovereignty which Geyser Ricks unrighteously seized-which is to say, the heir is our Most Sovereign Mighty Lord Barholm Clerett, Viceregent of the Spirit of Man upon Earth. In no way, most Mighty General, could the repossession of Stern Isle therefore be held a usurpation or aggression; for on the contrary righteousness consists of acting rightly-'

The voice droned on for another twenty minutes of rhetorical strophe and antistrophe, spiced out with appeals to truth, justice, reason and comparisons to events that no Brigade member in the Hall besides Forker himself had ever heard of. Unlike most of his nation, General Forker had had a comprehensive classical education; it was one major source of his unpopularity.

At last he broke in peevishly: 'Yes, yes, We will read your position paper, Ambassador Minh. At our leisure. These matters cannot be settled in a day, you know.'

'Your Mightiness,' Minh said, bowing again in profound agreement.

'Who's next?' Forker asked, as the Civil Government ambassadors bowed themselves backward, as neatly choreographed as dancers. Despite the heat and the prickly rash under his ceremonial uniform, the sight mollified him a little.

They know how to serve, he thought.

'Your Mightiness, the inventor and newsletter producer Martini of Pedden, currently dwelling in Old Residence, desires-'

'No!' This time Forker brushed aside the helping hands as he rose. 'When will you learn not to waste my time with trivialities?' The minister leaned close again, but the Brigade ruler interrupted him: 'I don't care how much he paid you. This audience is at an end. We will withdraw. Send the Chief Librarian Kassador to my quarters, after I've had a bath.'

Stentor-voiced, a Captain of the Life Guards called: 'Hear the word; this audience is at an end. So orders our General, His Mightiness Filip Forker, Lord of Men.'

The great hall echoed, cracking as the guards stamped their musket butts again on the floor and then brought the long weapons to port arms. Two platoons along either wall marched up to the Seat and out across the vacant space between the petitioners and the commander's dais, then did a left-wheel to face the crowd. The captain snapped another order, and they began to march forward in slow-pace: with the foot remaining poised for an instant before it came down in a unified hundredfold crash. It was a showy maneuver and perfectly timed. It also let everyone get to the big doors at the rear in an orderly fashion, without allowing any loitering. Nobody who saw the Life Guards' faces doubted that getting in their way would be a bad idea.

Forker and his entourage left by exits in the high arch behind the Seat. The remaining men were officers and nobles too important to be hustled out with the bulk of the petitioners and not close enough to Forker to leave by