Страница 87 из 120
"No, Your Highness. The vertical exaggeration is at one to three."
"Hmmm ... fascinating ..."
"What, Your Highness?" Pahner asked. He eyed the prince thoughtfully, wondering what the youngster was up to now. Whether it was practical or not, it should at least be interesting as hell, the Marine thought, because at some levels, Roger was a much more devious tactician than he himself was.
"There might just be an exploitable weakness here," the prince said, rotating the image again so that he was looking at the battlefield from ground level. "Captain Pahner, Lords of the Shin, we probably should try the briefed plan, if for no other reason than to put them a bit more on the defensive. But there might just be another way. Oh, my yes. Quite a weakness."
* * *
Cord turned back down the corridor, still leaning heavily on his spear for support, as the door closed on the prince. Pedi started to take his arm, then snatched her hand back as he jerked away.
"I am not so weak that I need your support, benan," he said harshly.
"I ask pardon, benai," she said. "I had not realized that contact with your benan was so beneath you."
"Not beneath me," Cord sighed. "Perhaps I should not snap, but ..."
"But?" Pedi opened the door and checked the hallway beyond. The Gastan had placed guards along the corridor, and they nodded to her as she passed. She had known some of them for years, grown up with them. But she could feel the distance that now separated them, a gulf that was hard to define, yet as real as death itself. All that she knew was that either she had grown away from Mudh Hemh, or it was somehow rejecting her.
"But ..." Cord began, then inhaled deeply, and not just from the pain of moving with his partially healed wound. "I know that I'm your benai, not your father," he growled. "But in the asi bond, the master has certain responsibilities. Although in my culture, females ca
"Problems?" Pedi asked archly as they came to their shared chamber. "What problems?" she asked as she opened the door and swept the room.
"Don't play with me, Pedi Karuse," Cord said firmly as he lowered himself onto the pile of cushions within. The fact that he barely managed to stifle a groan as he settled into them said a great deal about how far from recovered he truly was. "I'm in too much pain to play games. I can see your condition clearly, as can anyone with eyes. It is only the humans who are confused. I would have expected your father to be fuming by now."
"It is not my father's place to 'fume,' " she said sharply. "As benan, I am beyond the strictures of my family."
"Then it is my responsibility to investigate the situation," Cord said. "I am furious about this, you know. No true male would do this and then leave you to bear the burden."
Pedi opened her mouth, then shut it.
"It is my burden to bear," she said, after a moment. "It was my choice."
"It takes two to make such a choice," Cord pointed out, grimacing as he tried to find a comfortable position. "There is a male, somewhere, who has much explaining to do. A male who would impregnate you and then refuse to acknowledge that fact—such a male is without honor."
"It's not his fault," Pedi said. "I ca
Cord sighed in exasperation, but made a gesture of resignation.
"As you will. I ca
"I wouldn't hold you to that," Pedi said, getting the balm the human physician had made. "It is ... It isn't your fault."
"I, however, am a male of honor," Cord said, then sighed in relief as she rubbed the salve into the inflamed wound. "I thank you for that," he told her, then shook himself and looked at her sternly. "But to return to what truly matters, I will not let your children be raised as bastards, Pedi. I will not. It will be as if they were mine."
"I understand, benai, but I can handle it," she said woodenly. "And the situation with the father is ... complex. I wish that you would let me manage it in my own way."
"As you wish," he said with another sigh. "As you wish."
* * *
"I wish this didn't look so easy," Julian muttered.
"What?" O'Casey asked. "Something about this god-forsaken mess strikes you as 'easy'?"
She sat up straight on the camp stool, rubbing her back, and gri
There was too much data on the disk, and it was too consistent, and from too many known sources, to have been entirely generated locally. But if it had been generated by a central authority, if either the Empire or the Saints knew that Roger was alive on Marduk, the planet would have been crawling with searchers. Since it wasn't, the data was probably genuine, and the IBI agent was probably on the level. In which case, whatever happened here on Marduk, "just going home" was no longer an option.
"If you have good news, I could use some," she went on, leaning back from her own pad.
"That's just it—I don't know if it is good news," Julian said. "The problem is that this governor is either a complete and total idiot ... or else subtly brilliant. And I've been working on the premise of subtly brilliant, looking for the dastardly plan."
"I haven't even looked," O'Casey admitted. "Who is the governor?"
"Ymyr Brown, Earl of Mountmarch," Julian said, then looked up sharply as O'Casey let out a rippling peal of laughter before she slapped her hand over her mouth to restrain the follow-on giggles.
"You know him?" Julian asked. She nodded, both hands over her mouth, and the sergeant's eyes glinted wickedly. "Okay, I can see from your reaction that you do know him, and that he's probably not all that great. But you have to give him a break—growing up with a name like 'Ymyr' couldn't have been all that much fun."
"You're being much too kind to him," O'Casey assured him. Another giggle slipped out, and she shook her head. "And take my word for it, whatever you're looking at is not a deeply laid plan. However stupid it seems."
"I almost wish it was," the sergeant said. "I just hate relying on the bad guys' stupidity. Even idiots have a bad habit of slipping up and doing something reasonably intelligent every so often, if only so Murphy can screw with your mind. Besides, nobody could really be this dumb."
"What did he do?" O'Casey asked, looking over his shoulder at an indecipherable schematic. After a moment, it resolved itself into a map of the port.
"Well, he set up an intelligence network in all the satraps of Krath," Julian said. He touched a control and brought up a picture of the continent, with data scrolling along the sides and political boundaries mapped in. "That much isn't dumb. But he has all these reports coming in, and he didn't want the spies just walking through his front gates. So he set up cleared lanes in the defenses!"
O'Casey gri
"That's Mountmarch all over," she said. "He's a brilliant media manipulator, and thinks his brilliance at that extends to everything. There's nothing in the world for which he doesn't have a better, and much more brilliant, plan. Of course, the reality is that the vast majority of them backfire—often badly."