Sava's journal, entry 3

6 Mart 4999 — back in the Ill-Conceived Embrace, Istakhr system

We are packed into in our cramped spaceship once more. The hold contains wilderness gear for use on Nowhere, so I cannot use the space for practice. Assembling this materiel was the least eventful part of our stay at Samarkand in the House of Baron Mikhail Khrushchev Decados.

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Although our lives were in considerable danger and our flight out of Samarkand starport culminated with missiles being shot after us, I did leave the planet with regret. I enjoyed three moments of profound happiness on Istakhr that will haunt me for a while. For a few brief moments I did not worry.

The first and second moments were in the bazaar, choosing clothes for Teddy and Shui Lin to wear to Duke Haqim’s palace for a ball thrown by Earl Amir, Prince of Barran’s in honour of Sir Lexine. I decided that they needed to reflect their own personalities more than the strict observance of high fashion in their garb, so I chose a very conservative suit for Teddy but let him wear a white undershirt and his garish Charioteer shirt under the jacket — the effect was at once powerful, raffish and playful, and suited him very well. For Shui Lin I was somewhat malicious with her holy self-denial, and had made for her a simple shift-gown in a Li-Halan inspired cut, of ‘aer-silk’, a fabric from Pancreator-knows-where that is seemingly the colour of air, not quite white, not blue, but subtly all colours. With her hair worn up held with a lacquered chopstick she was striking, maidenly pure but also regal: her Li Halan heritage was challenged to assert itself by the gown and she shone that night! I took note of the looks on men’s faces when they saw her. I must admit it caused me a moment of jealousy, and then I knew I had wrought well

The third moment was the drive in the Baron’s groundcar to the ball. I experienced a sudden moment of presence, of knowledge of the moment itself, as I sat by the side of Baron Khrushchev on the soft leather of his car’s seats, with his uniformed driver separated from us by a glass partition. We watched the electric-blue dusky evening darken into night, drawing out the stars. The softly-worn towers of Samarkand swept back behind us with the clutter of foot-traffic about their skirts; the smoke, the lights, the softly washed-out colours of the marketplace! Before us rose the gilded domes of Amir’s palace above the date-palms behind a pale meltrock wall: a destination out of a desert dream!

The car stopped gently at the firelit open gates of the palace and staff opened the doors for us. The Baron alighted first and stepped round to help me out and then offered me his arm, and I suddenly regretted my callow lack of judgement in never having a crush on the man! I found myself trembling as I took his arm, and flushed, and my bodice was suddenly too tight. His grace was immaculate as I gawkishly fixed my gown-skirt about my shins. I wanted to lean into him as we walked into the palace. I wanted to be his, as the rapier at his waist was his. And I knew, that at that moment, he was not unaware of the romance possible between us, thanks to the sirenous song of the Samarkand desert by night. Alas!

The ball itself was somewhat underwhelming: we were back at the Baron’s residence before midnight. I think Sir Lexine’s announcement of Alexius’s crusade against the Vuldrok was baldly done and grudgingly rehearsed. Perhaps she should have done more in private to win support for it before she spoke. Having the Amir on side was too obvious. The Archbishop’s objections were formulaic. And including a Hazat hothead for comedic value was trite.

I ended up duelling this one: Sir Juan Cadesse de Castille de yadah yadah Hazat, in defence of Sir Lexine’s honour. He was allegedly one of the Baron’s better pupils, a self-determined duellist, and she had better things to do than recover from a thrashing or pushing up daisies. He was determined to pick a fight with Sir Lexine over Alexius going after the Vuldrok before helping the Hazat with the Kurgans. She described it to him patiently as a pragmatic decision to take softer targets before harder targets and that certainly sounded like good strategy to me. (Although balanced against having materiel and troops at the beginning of a campaign, as opposed to wielding notched swords with aching muscles at its end. We shall see.) But Sir Juan was unimpressed, or his mind already made up. Hazat honour is said to be rigid.

Still. A couple of snide remarks about his understanding of said Hazat honour and his loyalty to the Emperor encouraged him to challenge me. A tense moment before he chose swords over pistols, but I figured he would have virtually admitted cowardice in choosing not to draw a rapier on me. My second was Sir Lexine. Sir Juan’s was a young Decados that I thought was another student at the Baron’s academy, but more of her later. Prince Amir condescended to referee, which he did with graceful ennui but an eye for the spectacle.

Another notion of uncertainty: this was the first time I have faced a skilled opponent without the protection of my shield. I thought it quickly through. He would be relying on the converse, to take advantage of the moments of fear that such a state would normally provoke in his opponents, and so I resolved not to be as circumspect in the battle as I might against an unknown opponent.

We faced off. I found out later that Brother James set up behind me with his hand on his pistol to intimidate the Hazat. It’s not what I would have wanted but it fits the Decados mode, so I let it pass.

I’ve run the sequence through my mind a hundred times since. As I expected, Sir Juan was skilled and aggressive — lucho grande, in the slang of the Hazat. After a few moments of eyeing each other off he acted first, lungeing at me with stamping footwork but charging past me (which I barely anticipated in time), his blade wide to skewer me as he ran, in a fair memory of ancient chivalry and jousting, perhaps. He was obviously expecting me to be held enchained by fear and put no thought to an effective defence of his own. He also did not anticipate the slipperiness of the rockmelt floor and his charge was not balanced. He may as well have been throwing meat-axes at me. I tapped his blade off-line and curled a slashing riposte round his arm that opened up his torso and made a mockery of his tailored jacket. I lowered my blade and stepped back. The crowd twittered at the red blood. I fought to stop from grinning predatorily. The adrenalin was sweet.

I must note at this point that I had not slept during the day between the assassin’s unproductive interrogation and the ball, so I was clearly hyperaesthetic, which could also have explained my exultation on the arm of the Baron. Fatigue and adrenalin: powerful co-stimulants.

The seconds took us apart and Amir asked us if we could be reconciled. It looked as if Sir Juan would fight on so I thought to score another point: I offered that if he would acknowledge the Emperor’s right to dispose of his Empire as he wished, I would be satisfied. This of course led to a second passage at arms since his Decados second was also persuasive.

I was cruel. Sir Juan had learned little from our first exchange and came at me with a mere variation of his first attack. This time I stepped forward, slightly across his charge, and thrust at speed, taking him in the side of the abdomen before he could react. He actually could not stop himself running up my blade for a step and the tip came out his back with a pop of parting cartilage. I twisted the blade as I withdrew it this time and I regret that: I found out from Shui Lin later that I came within a hair’s grace of killing him with that blow. He collapsed in surprise as much as anything. He had the grace and sense to concede at that point and apologise for his words to Sir Lexine, and I accepted them with good grace. I thanked him for his honour as I felt bad about my earlier goading given his state now.

The Decados wench tried to urge Sir Juan to a third passage! I gave her The Look until she stopped hissing encouragements and she left sulkily into the gardens soon after. Would that I had challenged her as well: her name was Freka, the superior of the rogue Jakovian that we had watched die the previous night. Teddy noted to me later that she had been assiduous also in cleaning Sir Juan’s unbloodied blade, so I expect she had that ‘prepared’ for me as well.

Freka killed or crippled at least two people on her exit from the gardens. Decados ambassador Sir Grigori Constantin would never express another piece of ennui-filled sarcasm, being now a drooling, mind-blasted wreck. And Captain Swallow, who turned out to be a Killroy, met his nemesis in her. The Ambassador’s factotum ‘Jakob Jakovich’ also disappeared. Curiously, he had started the evening as a drooling idiot in the Ambassador’s train. I ascribed this to acting roles, perhaps a joke, as Jakob had been perfectly effective in the bounds of the embassy, but Teddy sees it as some kind of mental symbiosis between them — that there was only one mind in two bodies, now fled in the body of Jakob (still missing).

I must admit I do not understand the connections here. If Jakob was indeed Jakovian, does this mean he is allied with the rogue cells? Is he now their prisoner, their victim, or their stealthy hunter? Is Freka a psychic as well as a rogue Jakovian cell-leader, or was one of the other spies hiding in the garden to cover her escape — or to assassinate the Ambassador? Was the assault on the Ambassador something else entirely?

Teddy later related to us the gist of his words with Swallow. It turned out Swallow was a Killroy and had been investigating the disappearances of Charioteers around the Decados worlds. The Charioteers gone missing all owned jumpkeys that connected the Decados worlds to the rest, and could be relied on never to part with them willingly. I think this means that some force is looking to circumvent the Charioteers preparatory to an assault on Decados space. There is renewed trouble on Malignatius as well, but this seems less interesting to me. There is always unrest on Malignatius.

The Charioteers’ disappearances occurred about the same time that the Twins made their attack on me. Swallow had heard of Baroness Maya Zuviev Decados as well through his investigations, which leads me to believe she is up to her neck in whatever is going on. The rogue Jakovians hunting my party may not even be after me but Teddy, since he fits their target profile, and there is a new revelation making him not a peripheral player in my family’s games.

The next day, Teddy asserted after much ominous foreshadowing (he sets himself up very well, I must say), that he was a bastard son of Yevgeny. I see now with renewed eyes that he does have familial resemblance — inherited or manufactured I don’t know. He carries a family sigil, inherited or stolen I don’t know. He says he was tortured by the Twins once and carries scars which do look like their work, but this is another matter of mere appearance. He says he was looking after me in following me to Cadavus and offering his services, but he is a complex man and his words are either misleading or empty. But that said, that I have not died in his company I think is a good sign. So far. He has also claimed to be a Killroy (he claims that this is merely a ruse) and other Charioteers seem to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps, like me, he has seen too many ‘Killroy Agent 77, Xavier Diamond’ magic lantern shows. Diamond is supposed to be a secret agent but he never assumes a disguise and everybody seems to know him anyway. Head games from Charioteers. What is the universe coming to?

I don’t know what to make of Teddy’s stacked revelations. I can’t name my emotions. I am frustrated that his ancestry particularly is one more secret — or partial revelation — that I don’t understand. I certainly don’t quite believe him. Perhaps this is why I can’t decide how to respond. Teddy cowers when I come near him as if he expects to be beaten up. This revelation has also put Brother James into a bad mood at him, but I have dealt with this effectively by addressing them both formally, putting everything onto a professional level that they can still function at.

The day before we left Istakhr, Brother James and Teddy got into another car chase and gunfight with the rogue Jakovians and killed one, injured another, but at considerable cost to their own health. My understanding is that they did work to aid each other in a situation where either might have left the other to their fate, so I think the trouble between them can be healed.

The most important piece of information we won from this fight was that the Jakovians had a missile launcher. So warned, we were able to deal with the missiles they did indeed fire at us on the way into space. Teddy’s piloting and Brother James’s deadeye with a flare gun, to be precise. I would be considerably worse off to lose either of them, even if the one lies to me, and the other tells me nothing at all.

 

On the night after the ball and my duel, I slipped into nightmares towards dawn. Fatigue and reaction, perhaps. I was on the Baron’s Tantsyen konykov and fighting for my life. I could not read the curves but only react. I knew that no matter how skilfully I defended myself, I would die. At that point my assailant, whom I can not see even now, slipped a strike past my perfect Decados defence and slew me. The killing move.

I took the dream down to the Baron’s training room and tried to work through it but the shards of dream kept getting in the way. A duellist must expect to be pierced every once in a while but this was different: the imagined sensation of cold steel penetrating my breast and heart chilled me and made me clumsy.

The Baron came upon me then. He had resumed the avuncular mask that he had almost let slip last night; but I still felt my infatuation for him. We talked it through. He let me down gently, as perhaps he ought to have done. He claimed advanced age disqualified him from my affections, but 56 is not old! Not for a man like him! I must respect his decision however, and find some way to turn my infatuation back into mere admiration. I could learn to love him as a mentor, or even as an uncle, as he seems to wish.

It’s confusing. Although I have read many ‘romantic’ novels, I am still a stranger to these emotions.

The Baron led me through my dream’s lesson. There is indeed a rare combination of Hazat blade and Li Halan footwork that is a killing move against the standard Decados doctrine. As I know that, I know there are also several counters, and I am reassured. The Baron’s Tantsyen konykov is his lifetime’s work, and includes kata from all the major houses, as well as the Brother Battle, the Ukari, and many snippets from across the Known Worlds. It is not yet complete of course. There are spaces. I have resolved to help the Baron fill them in, and to follow his lead as a disciple of his school.

The Baron revealed that he knew my parents, and travelled with them for a time. He deeply liked Yevgeny but detested Maya, and this ended their time together. Perhaps this explains the avuncular mood he has brought to his relationship with me. I will have to be content with that.

I left with sorrow this conversation, and later the Baron’s house. I will visit him again and I will bring him gifts of swordplay.

I have found a friend.