Brett, the Searchers' escort, stepped into the audience hall between Race and Julia. He came to a dead halt when he realized that the throne was empty. No one was present except guards in battlesuits at the room's three sets of doors.
"I was told . . . ," the underchamberlain said to the warrior in black-and-silver armor at the door giving onto the imperial apartments. "Ah, that the emperor wished to see me at once?"
The volume of the large-domed room turned Brett's voice into a pattern of cicada raspings. Without the usual crowd to give it life, the audience hall was a tomb.
"Don't get your bowels in 'n uproar, pretty-boy," the guard boomed harshly through his suit speaker. "Himself'll be here when he chooses t' be, don't you worry."
Julia grinned at Brett. "Little toad," she said distinctly. The Searchers were sworn to obey Venkatna in all things . . . but the underchamberlain had attempted to turn imperial authority into personal favors from the new slaves on the road back from Simplain.
Race held Brett while Julia singed the hairs off Brett's scrotum with a candleflame. It had taken the underchamberlain some time and a serious blister to realize that he would be much better off if he held absolutely still. . . .
"I wouldn't mind a piece of that, though," Race said, nodding toward the black-and-silver guard.
Julia laughed. Their uninhibited voices rang clearly from the ceiling vaults. "You don't know what there is inside," she said. "Might be like an oyster, all gray and shriveled up."
"I know," said Race, as though the object of their discussion were on another planet instead of listening in amazement from a few meters away, "that if he's got armor that good—"
The black-and-silver suit was at least third-class, maybe second.
"—then he's worth my time to see how he handles himself shucked."
The warrior at the staff entrance, through which Brett had brought the Searchers, rumbled a peal of amplified laughter.
Julia walked over to the Web and ran her hand through the air, just above one of the crystalline struts. "This must be what they want us for," she said.
"For North's sake!" the underchamberlain blurted. "Don't touch that."
"Says who, sonny?" Race snapped. She giggled. "Baldie, I mean."
"Like a maze," Julia said, leaning with her hands on her thighs to peer toward the benches within the apparatus. The rearward thrust of her hips to balance drew the eyes of the four men in the room. "You know what it looks like . . . ?"
"Something Sparrow night have done," Race agreed, suddenly sober. "I hear he's—"
She shrugged. "Up there, now, you know? Serving Saburo."
Brett and the nearest guard stiffened to hear a god's name in this context. Though children were named for gods, and the slaves might have meant—
"Saburo's a brave man, then," Julia said without irony. The men overhearing her relaxed.
The tall Searcher knelt. Someone her size would have to hunch forward like a gnome to reach the benches.
"Yeah," agreed Race. "Giving orders to Sparrow would be like giving orders to Lord Hansen: they better be the right orders. Those two have got tempers as cold as North's heart."
The warrior and underchamberlain looked at one another. They stood very still.
Servants pulled open the door behind the black-and-silver guard, then hopped aside. Emperor Venkatna stepped through with his right arm around Esme and a worried look on his face. "Really, my dear," he said. "There's no need for you to be up at all."
His wife patted his hand. Her face beneath the heavy makeup had a grayish pallor. "Nonsense," she said. "Nonsense. A little touch of indigestion isn't going to keep me down."
Esme straightened with an effort, but her voice gained strength as she did so. "These are the slaves, then? I hadn't realized they'd be so attractive. Do you suppose . . . ?"
"No, no," Venkatna said with a touch of peevishness. "They're far too valuable to waste warming my bed."
He frowned. "If they have the skills they're supposed to, that is."
"I only want you happy, dearest," Esme said.
Race looked at Julia. Julia rocked her left hand in the air, palm down. Venkatna wasn't a badly set-up man. A bit on the soft side, but athletic ability on the battlefield didn't necessarily translate to skill on a good, firm mattress.
Anyway; the Searchers would perform whatever tasks their master required, for as long as he lived. . . .
Venkatna tried to support Esme up the low steps of the throne, but she now resisted the coddling. "Go on," she said crisply, gesturing to the seat. "I'll not sit down before you, you know that."
The emperor made a moue that flexed the tips of his moustache, then settled himself on the throne. His wife lowered herself primly to the top step. She put her hand affectionately on Venkatna's knee.
Venkatna patted Esme's hand. "All right," he said, looking from one Searcher to the other. I understand you are skilled in the use of the Web?"
"Yes, that's right, your majesty," Brett interjected. Old Saxtorph, who had replaced the brain-dead Boardman as chamberlain, couldn't last long. Brett's risk in calling himself to the emperor's attention was—possibly, very possibly—worth the chance of being remembered when it came time to appoint another chamberlain.
"Be silent, fool," Esme said without bothering to look at him.
Race pursed her lips. "Ah . . . ," she said. "What is it that your majesty wishes us to do, exactly?"
"Get into the Web and use it," Venkatna said with a flash of anger. "The merchant who sold it to me said that it could affect my whole domains. I want you to do that. I want you to bring peace to my entire Empire!"
Julia glanced at her companion, then back to the emperor. "Peace, your majesty? When you say peace, do you mean . . . ?"
Venkatna lunged up from his throne. "I mean peace!" he shouted. "I mean that no one in the Empire takes up arms against my orders. Peace!"
Race looked at the Web. The benches were to lie on, that was clear enough. For the rest, the device was an amalgam of nodes and shimmers almost too delicate to be material. It was as incomprehensible as North's purpose in sending her here to Venkatna.
But North had a purpose, of that she and Julia could be sure.
"Your orders are our fate, your majesty," the tall Searcher said. She bent and crawled within the Web through a gap—not an entrance, there was no proper entrance. Julia found another opening across the Web's humped form.
The bench felt cool to Race's back. The glimmering pattern of which the Web was woven did not so much illuminate the Searchers inside as it distorted the humans and architecture when Race tried to look beyond it. She closed her eyes because she could think of nothing else to do—
There was a globe of infinite vastness, and she had no being. It was colder than thought, and her not-self trembled.
Peace . . . boomed a voice/memory.
She concentrated. Tiny figures skittered across a landscape dwarfed by the hugeness of the frame on which it appeared. Arc weapons flashed, spikes in the limitless dark.
Race pushed as she would move the controls of her dragonfly. The cold gnawed at her heart and marrow. In the distance she heard moaning; Julia, or it might have been Race's own voice.
The arcs vanished . . . sprang up elsewhere in emptiness and winked out . . . elsewhere. . . . Nothing was constant but the cold that sucked away life and juices.
Your orders are our fate.
She thought she heard North's titanic laughter trail across the black sky.