Hell's Gate

Chapter Thirty

Andrin's fashionable coiffure streamed out behind her in a mass of flying, golden-shot black silk, shredded and ruined by the wind, as she stood at the forward edge of the thirty thousand-ton steamer IMS Windtreader's promenade deck. She paid her hair's careful arrangement's destruction no heed; she had far too much on her mind to worry about that, although her lips twisted wryly in anticipation of her lady-in-waiting?and protocol instructor's?reaction. Lady Merissa was nearly three times Andrin's age and profoundly conscious of her charge's social standing. She would undoubtedly be properly horrified … if she could bring herself out of her seasick misery long enough to notice. Andrin felt genuinely sorry for Merissa, even if she did find it unfathomable how anyone could be seasick aboard such a large vessel. Personally, she would vastly have preferred her father's racing yacht, Peregrine, where the motion would have been truly lively, but Lady Merissa's misery was too obvious for anyone to doubt.

Yet sympathy or no, this morning was far too glorious for Andrin to spend cooped up in the cabin, holding lady Merissa's hand solicitously. And so she had climbed out of bed the moment the rising sun sent its golden light streaming into her cabin's scuttles. She'd thrown on an appropriate gown and a warm woolen coat, lifted her hawk Finena from her perch to her gauntleted arm, and headed for the cabin door with indecorous haste. Lady Merissa was far too well-bred to protest sharing her cabin with both a grand princess and her favorite falcon, but Andrin knew her seasick mentor would rest easier with Finena out of the room. So she'd carried her companion up into the sunshine with her, which had delighted the hawk as much as it had her.

And they'd needed that delight. Needed it badly.

The news of the slaughter of the Chalgyn Consortium survey crew had broken, as everyone had known it must. And the impact on public opinion had been even worse than anyone had feared.

The print coverage, and the editorials were bad enough. The non-Talented majority of Sharonians might not be able to share the Voicenet reports, experience the events directly, but they understood what had happened. They might not understand why it had happened?in which, Andrin admitted, they were not so very different from their emperors and kings and presidents?but they knew in excruciating detail what had happened to that survey crew. They knew because one courageous woman had held onto her Voice link through hell itself to be certain that they would … and they knew that, too.

But for those who could See the Voicenet reportage, it was even worse.

Andrin had forced herself to See the SUNN Voicenet report. She had only an extremely limited telepathic Talent, but it was more than enough to follow Voicenet transmissions. After witnessing that report, however, she found herself wishing passionately that she'd had no telepathic Talent at all. Not even the nightmares she'd experienced in her own Glimpses had been enough to prepare her for the sheer horror of what Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr had endured before her own death.

The events themselves had been horrible enough, but the sheer power and clarity of Shaylar's Voice had stu

It was all there. It had happened to them, to their sisters, and their brothers. They knew precisely what she had experienced, because they had experienced it with her. And because even as they Saw it through her eyes, they had Seen it through the Darcel Kinlafia's, as well. He had relayed Shaylar's thoughts and emotions with agonizing fidelity, but they'd been too deeply linked for him to separate his own from the message when he passed it up the Voice chain. And so, in addition to their own reactions to Shaylar's raw experiences, they saw them through the eyes of a man who had obviously loved her. And that added still more poignancy?and horror?to the nightmare which had devoured her.

No single event in the entire history of Sharona had ever hit home like this one. Andrin knew that it worried her father deeply. Zindel chan Calirath was no more immune to outrage and fury than anyone else, but he was Emperor of Ternathia. He had to think beyond the outrage, beyond the madness of the moment, and the blast furnace anger and hatred?and fear?sweeping through his home universe threatened to severely limit his own options and choices. As he'd told Shamir Taje he feared before the Voice Conclave, and as Andrin had seen in her own horrible Glimpses, the chance of somehow evading the cataclysmic possibility of open warfare with these people, whoever they were, was growing less and less likely by the day.

And that was the true reason?little though Andrin was prepared to admit it to anyone, especially her father?that she'd felt such a need to race up to the promenade deck and submerge herself in life and the input of her physical senses. To at least temporarily escape the conviction that some huge inescapable boulder was grinding down the mountainside of history towards her, crushing everything in its path.

And for the moment, at least, it was working, she thought gratefully in the corner of her mind still focused on analysis. It was a very small corner, because she was nearly drunk on the sensations of sunlight on seawater, of wind hammering past her face, the deep-seated vibration of Windtreader's powerful engines underfoot, and the rhythmic wash and rumble of water, piling away from the ship's stem in a great, white furrow as the liner cut through the whitecaps. Windtreader was slower than Peregrine, the imperial yacht, but she'd been built for the trans-Vandor run between Ternathia and New Farnal, with emphasis on speed and comfort. She was easily capable of a sustained twenty knots, and her furnishings rivaled those of the finest hotel ashore. Designed to transport better than five hundred first-class passengers, four hundred and fifty second-class, and up to six hundred third-class, she had more than enough internal space for the huge staff which had to go everywhere the Emperor of Ternathia went. Which was fortunate, since this time there were several hundred important politicians and their staffs, as well.

And while Windtreader might be slower than oceanic greyhounds like Peregrine, it was unlikely she'd be called upon to outrun anyone on this voyage.

Andrin looked to starboard, were one of Windtreader's guardians plowed steadily through the swell. IMS Prince of Ternathia was an armored cruiser?twelve thousand tons of sickle-prowed armor plate, with four twin nine-inch turrets, two each fore and aft, and a broadside of fourteen six-inch guns. Her sister ship, IMS Duke Ihtrial cruised watchfully to port of the liner, interposed between her and any threat, and Andrin wondered just how anxious Master-Captain Farsal chan Morthain, the escort commander, was feeling this fine morning as she stood here, enjoying the exuberant wind. It wasn't often, after all, that the Emperor, the heir-secondary, the entire Privy Council, the speakers of all three of the Ternathian Houses of Parliament, a sizable chunk of the most senior members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the most senior lords justicar of the Emperor's Bench, over seventy members of Parliament, and the Imperial chiefs of staff were all packed aboard a single ship.