Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [58]
Seeing the Chairman flinch at being treated as an unimportant subordinate, Peter could barely cover his smile. He took Estarra’s arm, letting her carry the potted treeling, and they walked together, King and Queen, partners and lovers.
The Prism Palace rested atop a smooth ellipsoidal hill from which seven streams radiated outward like the spokes of a wheel. Ahead, they could see a flow of people marching along spiral pathways in a ritualized procession toward arched entrances of the structure.
Estarra asked, “Are we required to make some sort of ceremonial approach to visit the Mage-Imperator?”
The trade minister gestured to the pilgrims washing themselves in the seven streams. After completing the mandated ablutions, each pilgrim crossed the water and then proceeded in an ascending spiral up the citadel hill to the next stream. “Ildirans pay their respects in this way, according to long-standing habit and tradition. We do not have religious mandates as humans do, but our traditions approach the weight of what you would call holy laws. These pilgrims would never shame themselves by deviating from the long and arduous route visitors are required to follow before they may be allowed to behold the Mage-Imperator.”
Basil seemed displeased at the “long and arduous” aspect, since he considered this visit of state to be a brief political formality. “You forget that King Peter rules the Terran Hanseatic League. He is our equivalent to the Mage-Imperator.”
The Ildiran minister said without rancor, again speaking directly to the King as if neither Basil nor Estarra was there, “No one is the equivalent of the Mage-Imperator.”
Chapter 26—MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA’H
Even sitting under the skysphere, beneath the projection of his benevolent face on a slowly rotating cloud of mist, Jora’h knew that all was not perfect in the Ildiran Empire. He balanced too many disasters in his hands, though the humans guessed none of it.
He wished the King and Queen had chosen a different time to come, especially now. The Mage-Imperator did not want representatives from the Terran Hanseatic League to witness any of the brush fires or private emergencies that were spreading like a plague across the Empire. Thankfully, these people could not feel the thism. They would not sense the thrumming and unsettled feelings that all Ildirans were enduring—he more than any of them.
But he was required to greet them, speak with them, reassure them. Perhaps they could offer some hope that there might be another way to survive.
The Mage-Imperator settled back to wait for King Peter and his companions to be led through the colorful crystalline halls. He felt small in the voluminous chrysalis chair that had once held his father’s bulk. Crises pulled him in all directions, yet Jora’h made his face a placid mask, attempting to match the visage projected above him. The humans would be here soon.
A sense of impending danger skittered toward him along countless threads of thism: the recent hydrogue attack on Hrel-oro, a persistent anxiety emanating from a small skeleton crew on Maratha, and worst of all the murder of his son Pery’h and the incomprehensible rebellion on Hyrillka. And more had recently died there, many more. Jora’h had sensed it like thunder in his mind from Adar Zan’nh’s maniple. Two days ago the sensation had slammed into him, then resonated through his whole body like a silver mallet striking a bone wind chime. But the thism was silent, cutting him off. He sensed that Zan’nh remained alive, but he knew no more than that about what was happening at Hyrillka.
Immediately after feeling the wave of deaths that burned him like hot acid, he had called the Solar Navy’s ranking officer, Tal O’nh, to put together three scout cutters with a full crew. O’nh had dispatched them just this morning to reconnoiter at Hyrillka. Once they discovered what had happened to Adar Zan’nh’s warliners, they had instructions to return with a full report.