Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (69 page)

At the smaller gate stands a sentry in dark blue. His eyes are blank as the man in black leads his charge past.

“You are Lady Kryn Kirsten, the only daughter and child of the Duke of Kirsten, first loyalist behind the Prince Regent. You have suffered an accident in your return to Karnak.”

The dark man smiles at her, then wipes his expression blank.

“You will find it has all happened this way, though some has yet to happen that already has. Remember, Lady-to-be, do not marry.”

She stands in the courtyard, sinking to her knees, head swimming as the alarms explode around her, clutching at the memories of the man in black that fade as her thoughts lose their hold on them, finding herself left with memories of a long black tunnel and with new memories, recollections of a tall man, a forbidding woman, and towers.

The last words, words someone else has spoken, remain.

“Do not marry.”

 

lvii

From within the tunnel he has wrapped around himself, Martel can sense a spark, a familiar flame separated from him by the thinnest of margins. He knows what the spark represents, and wills his course away from it. Too close to that spark, and the energy he controls will short-circuit across more than a millennium. Without the focus he embodies … he pushes away the thoughts, locks his mind on the place and the time where he is heading, and the tunnel of energy trails him.

Martel pushes himself away from the spark, thoughts lashing against time, most of his energy devoted merely to keeping his links with his starting point open.

“Can't go where you haven't been, is that it?” he mutters, though he neither speaks nor is heard in the nontime nexus where he finds himself suspended, but his thoughts form as though he had spoken.

He lets himself drift forward with the tide, though that motion is an illusion, because there is no tide to time, and casts his thoughts into the real time outside his energy tunnel for an anchor.

If Kryn had been born when the Duke thought she had, when she thought she had, now she would be away at Lady Persis' School on Albion. Chronologically, in real fact, the Duke does not yet have his daughter, though she has been placed already.

Martel shakes his head.

If you can only keep track until all the pieces are in place …

As Martel sets foot on the golden tiles, the pathway to the back gate of the Duke's holding, the one on the park, is still shrouded in mist.

“Halt!” The stun rifle is centered on Martel's midsection.

“Halted I am, my friend.”

“Your business?”

“To bring a report to the Duke on his daughter Kryn.”

“Daughter Kryn? The Duke has no daughters—”

Martel reaches out, holds the man's mind frozen as he supplies vague recollections of a slender, dark-haired girl … seen from a distance practicing with a light saber, rushing by the gate on the way out to the park, smiling with a new sunkite, sulking … and finally leaving by the main gate with four trunks and three guards.

Martel finds his vision blurring with the effort, realizes how much energy he is using merely to hold himself in this place and time.

“Oh, her … gone away to school.”

“I know. I know. The Duke asked me to report. Here are my credentials.”

Martel might have been able to alter the man's memories from a distance, but no feedback would have been possible. With Kryn's life the question, he had to do as well as he could.

The guard looks at Martel's empty hands, and nods.

“Lord Kirsten won't be receiving yet.”

“Realized that after I'd left the port. Anywhere I could wait?”

Lowering the blue-barreled weapon, the sentry wrinkles his forehead, chews at his lower lip with sharp upper canines.

“Don't know. Let me ask the Captain.”

“You don't have to wake him. I'll wait out here.” Martel eases himself onto the bench across from the guard box and ignores the stunner.

Didn't realize it would be this much of a drain …

“He's up. Already been round once.”

Martel senses the Guard Captain before the man steps from the nearer wing. Senses him and inserts the memories of Kryn, subtly different, before the security chief sees him.

“Captain Herlieu, this gent needs a place to wait 'fore he makes his report to the Duke.”

Martel stands and bows.

“Averil Seine, Captain. From Albion with a report for His Grace.”

Herlieu frowns.

“About?”

“His daughter.”

“Would have thought Her Grace would be the one to get that.”

Martel shrugs. Even with a bogus set of memories, Herlieu was rationalizing to fit the situation. Obviously, the Duchess had a great deal of power.

“Ah, yes … perhaps it should be. My commission was signed by the Duke, and … alas, not knowing the ways, I assumed…”

Herlieu laughs, his voice booming in the narrow space by the gate, the echoes bouncing back from the high and totally unnecessary bluestone battlements above.

“Of course you wouldn't know. The Duke, bless his soul, signs all the documents, sits on the Regent's Council, and fine advice he gives there. But her Ladyship runs Southwich here. Still … he's the Duke.”

Martel bows again. “I understand. Thank you for setting straight the record and for keeping me from a mispresumption.”

“Sure she'll see you. Early riser she is. Now, what was your name?”

“Averil Seine. From Albion.”

“Just sit here on the bench, and I'll tell her myself.”

Martel sits, letting his mind follow the Guard Captain, touching the Imperial Marine's thoughts.

Funny-looking fellow … why would they want to know about Lady Kryn? Lots kept quiet on her … him not knowing about the Duke, either …

Martel searches for the Duchess, not that it is hard. Her thoughts are clear. Crystal-clear and strong. He recoils, but not before easing in a thought or two about the Duchess' daughter.

He waits on the bench.

“You're to follow me, Master Seine.”

Martel bows again and follows Captain Herlieu up the slidechutes to the tower room that views both the park and the palace.

“You may leave us, Captain.”

“Yes, Your Ladyship.”

The slidedoor closes.

“You're a fraud, and soon to be a dead one, Master Seine or whatever your real name is, unless you can tell me what your game is. Then you might have a shot at a permanent lower-level apartment.”

Martel probes at her mind. Strong enough, talented enough, that she would be a goddess if she sought Aurore—and he is limited indeed by the need to hold his links to the future from which he has come. Does he dare to tap power sources of a local nature? Will they break down the insulation between him and the present?

“It's simple,” he temporizes. “You have no heirs. I offer you a daughter who will become Regent and Viceroy, who will become second only to the Emperor in power.”

NO!

“An interesting idea,” she says aloud. “But why should I believe it? Much less from an unknown from nowhere?”

A lurid thought surfaces in her mind, an image of Martel ripping off her clothes, followed by an image of her ordering him tortured.

“I think you misunderstand, Madame. The young woman already exists. She will honestly believe that she is Kryn Kirsten. She resembles you, and, to some degree, the Duke, and she will be accepted as your daughter.”

Martel surveys the room. The Duchess has set aside her breakfast, and, silver hair pulled back into a tidy knot, peers down from the meter-plus bed platform at him. The marble platform is a single slab, partly draped in blue, the fabric shot through with a gold thread glittering with a light of its own.

Martel senses she is ready to push the red button. He reroutes the energy, but does not absorb it.

“Go ahead. I'm standing in the fire zone. But it won't work. Neither will the guard call.”

She jabs the button.

A weak red light pulses over Martel and dies.

“What do you really want?”

“A good home for a girl who deserves it.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“No. But you will.”

He throws his mind at her, as much of it as he dares, while still holding the links foretime. Unlike the Guard Captain, the sentry, there will be no insinuating memories, not quiet manipulation.

OUT! GET OUT! SCUM!
Her mental screams pound at Martel.

Martel reels, knees bending with the effort of holding the circuits diverted, the energies from future and present separate, and pressing convictions and memories upon the Duchess Marthe at the same time, without destroying her in the process.

He forces an image of Kryn at her.

Your daughter … your hope for the future …

Mental pictures of Kryn, smiling, romping in the courtyard of Southwich, pictures of Marthe holding her arms out to her daughter, pictures of a small face looking up wide-eyed.

NO! I'M THE LITTLE GIRL.

Martel feels the sweat beading on his forehead.

Should have been sneaky … stupid … never figured on this kind of strength.

The energy link back to Karnak future dwindles. He doesn't want to have to live the same millennium twice.

He staggers, still beaming images at the Duchess.

She throws them back.

NO! CHILDREN ARE PIGS. EVERYONE WOULD KNOW. NOT FOR ME TO BE DEGRADED. WON'T BE A SOW. WON'T LET THEM THINK THAT!

The temperature in the bedchamber, expansive as it is, has to have risen twenty degrees.

Martel shifts his probes toward the Duchess' nerve centers.

DIE! DIE!

His shifts and the lack of images give her the room to counterattack.

Martel feels his body crumpling, and in a desperate effort seizes the power directly from the palace sources, ignoring the emotional impact the sudden blackness creates for the staff in all the scattered and endless rooms.

With the surge of renewed energy he slams aside her defenses and feels her go unconscious.

That done, he switches his concentration to the fraying edge between his own links to the blackness of the future.

DANGER! TWO CANNOT BE ONE, NOT NOW, NOT EVER.

He wrenches the two energy lines apart, somehow welds them separate, before the blackness closes in on him.

Thud! Thud!

Martel opens his eyes. His is sprawled on the pale yellow heatstones of the Duchess' receiving room/bedchamber.

Thud! Thud!

He wobbles as he climbs to his feet.

His forehead is wet, and he wipes it away with the back of his left hand. His sleeve comes away with a mixture of blood and sweat. Knees rubbery, he peers up at the bed block.

Head aching, he probes.

The Duchess Marthe is unconscious, but breathing.

His eyes water with the pain, but he keeps probing. Stroke—the mental strain of his last probes has apparently triggered it.

Should he leave well enough alone?

He shakes his head, regretting the motion as it drives needles into his thoughts.

Kryn will need a strong protector, and the Duchess is as strong as they come. Besides, the Duchess, for all her bias against motherhood, also deserves better.

Thud! Thud!

Conscious of the attempts to break through the massive door, he returns his attention to the woman, repairing the damage and insinuating the necessary memories at the same time. In some ways he is lucky. The Duchess is the type of woman who will keep precious few keepsakes of her “daughter.” Those few he can supply.

He completes his work with a mental report on Kryn's progress at Lady Persis' School, awakens the Duchess, and lets himself collapse again.

“What's this?” demands the Lady Marthe as she keys open the door.

Three guards and the Captain stumble through.

“You didn't answer, Milady. Even the emergency call. We were concerned.”

“You had right for your concern, I suppose, Captain, but not for me. Master Seine had some sort of seizure, and I was simply distracted. My controls malfunctioned, and I couldn't seem to reach you. At the same time, I certainly wasn't going to leave Master Seine.”

Martel groans.

“Help the poor man up. And get someone up here to clean up the mess he made. Immediately!”

“Yes, Milady.”

“Get him some attention. Put him in the Red Room. When he recovers, he should see the Duke.”

That is fine with Martel. So far the Duchess is reacting as he has planned … after his setbacks. Martel needs the rest and a quiet place from which he can influence more of the staff and get to the Duke.

He lets himself be carried while mentally reaching out toward the Duke's sleeping quarters.

The Duke of Kirsten is still asleep. The woman with him is not, but pretends to be, bored as she is.

Martel ignores her and first plants the memory chains of Kryn in the Duke's mind, then plants a more limited set and a few vagrant thoughts in the woman's mind.

She calls herself Alicia, and officially she is the Duchess' first maid. What that means to Martel is that the Duchess chooses the Duke's mistresses, and carefully.

Alicia is cunning, but the shrewdness is realistic.

Old bloat,
she thinks,
some lover. Sort of kind, but the Duchess pushes him around. Still, a good thing for me. And when he's satisfied, she lets me alone.

Martel pushes an image of Kryn at her.

Never could figure out how they got together long enough for even one. She's sharp, sharp like the Duchess. Little nicer, maybe, but when they're young you never know.

Martel relaxes, lets himself go limp as the two guards ease him into the oversized stratobed, drifts his thoughts back from the palatial sleeping room where the Duke snores and Alicia, the bored and blond young maid, pretends with closed eyes.