Assassin Read online

  “We must talk of known and true things that have served our family well. I have to date told these to you only in parables. Now we’ll speak in naked truths, for you are nearly Tennō.”

  “Please, instruct me.”

  Mary has little choice but to proceed right past Pyotr’s false front. He’s the oldest male heir. His elder sister Chiyoko would make a better monarch, but be rejected by too many for her gender. His brother Friedrich can barely wash and dress himself. Her fourth child is dead. Pyotr is the future of the lines.

  ***

  “Very well. Know then that, as I have told you before today, you must find counterweights to any ally or enemy you make. Only through balance can you rule an empire or a Universe that’s always seeking imbalance. I speak not of physics but of an art far harder than any science, called politics.”

  ‘Talk as you will, Mother, but you’ll not persuade me that as Tennō I should conserve the past only. That’s not the way ahead, not the road taken by genius. I’ll listen, but your old dugs are dry, your ways and days are done, while my virile dawn has yet to break along a horizon of war.’

  “Inside the Imperium, and out there across all the thousand stars of Orion, balance is the only and true organizing principle. It’s the Law of Gravity that holds together all successful policy and politics.”

  “Isn’t the art of politics, like gravity, the concentration of power, not sharing it? If I allow power to be shared in a system of balances, won’t that reduce my own power and prevent taking decisive action?”

  “Sometimes one must concentrate, as we Oetkerts know well. I don’t say share your power foolishly, as Calmari and some Neutrals do with the ordinary people. Have no truk with that!”

  “Hardly.”

  “Yet don’t hoard all power as does Jahandar, who holds so much in his own hands it’s always slipping through as he tries to catch it with enfeebled fingers, so that he holds less than before the harder that he squeezes. Even his dribbles must be growing thinner with each passing decade.”

  “He is terrible and powerful still?”

  “He is, but so unbalanced in mind and person that he removed all Daura from the Great Game of Orion politics. The brown star field is silent and dark to us.”

  “The annual ships tell you this?”

  “A single Green Ship per year, of all ships in Orion. They gather what intel they can from orbit, parked for a week under that absurd moon face he carved in his own graven image that glowers above Nalchik. They give us our only window into the closed, brown mystery that is the northeaster stars.”

  “He permits this one ship to visit, why?”

  “It is our shared tradition, of Great Power defiance in the face of the Calmar Union. It is also the only window looking out from his eerie in Astrana, where he lives alone. His wife is dead and his child is locked in a forever prison.”

  “What do you see through this two way window?”

  “That you should watch our northern border. Never let vigilance slip.”

  “What’s the danger there?”

  “Jahandar is no old Dauran Emperor. He’ll never ally with Calmari, who loathe his ways as much as he loathes them. But he’s unpredictable, and Daura remains immensely powerful still.”

  “And his military? Does it also sleep?”

  “For the most part, yes. He neglects the military, looking inward and to his terrible secret police, his Shishi. Pray to your gods that the beast slumbers long in its lair. Daura is so powerful that, even coated in dust and web and decades of neglect, its military can be a threat to us even on its own.”

  ‘Good to learn and know. There may be fresh opportunity there, a path to war never taken by us, to ally with Daura against the rest. A means to finally overcome the ‘Auld Alliance, by breaking it before it forms. Damn the balance!’

  “Might there be room in this separation from the ‘Auld Alliance for us to slip into place, to change all rules of the Great Game as it has been played ‘till now?”

  “No! Daura is our oldest enemy. Jahandar can never be trusted. To what good or useful end would alliance with his dark, Hermit Empire serve? War? Leave thought of that aside! The dead, northern stars offer us nothing. Cling to balance instead, among all the Great Powers.”

  ‘You lay out these ideas like they’re rules. But rules aren’t just made for idiots, they’re idiotic. Talent like mine, a true genius, operates outside all rules. I’ll test what you say about Jahandar, for I see that more may be possible than anyone thinks. Not you or SAC or the Cherry Blossoms or the Brethren.’

  “You mean, I should seek balance not just in the ends pursued, but also in all the means by which I must rule?”

  “Yes. Hoard what power you must in order to stay in power, but divide the rest among your foes and you’ll be more secure than if you lock power away, like Jahandar, then forget where you laid the key.”

  “What is the key to the lock, Mother?” He knows the question flatters her. She answers without pausing, lost in recollections of past successes of her own quarter century as Dowager Regent, and the long history of her lineage.

  “To never favor any one faction too much or too long over another. Unless you must do so for a short while, as you ready to restore the balance in your favor by turning on the stronger faction, the one you most recently allied with, or helped rise up to take first place in the pecking order.”

  “It sounds less like balance and more like constant change. It sounds like a dance of chaos.”

  “Very good! You begin to see it for what it is. Yes, the key to keeping a balance of power is to ensure that it’s forever in imbalance. Move toward constant chaos, do not permit favoritism.”

  “So that I and not my partners of the moment control the music, and pace the dance?”

  “Exactly. Power abhors partners yet it needs them, too, just as it abhors and fills in vacuums. No void survives in politics. Some power will quickly fill it. Therefore, look to the voids as the places to swap allies and adversaries, to change music or pace. Foul things are best done in the dark.”

  “That is wise, Mother.” This time he means it. At least about endorsing endless cycles of betrayal to elevate himself and secure his goals. ‘Yet I also think your wisdom comes to you too late in life, as it does for most.’

  “Cater to human weakness and you tap into human nature. Use your partners’ jealousies and desire for revenge for petty slights against each other to balance factions. These are two of the central, abiding traits of human nature and all politics. Turn them back on their thousand authors to rule the multitude. Always remember, if the people aren’t at your feet they’ll soon be at your throat.”

  Pyotr knows this lesson, and nods in agreement. ‘Let me seek to please you, playing the good son, until the time of betrayal comes. For the third leg of the crooked trinity of politics is vanity, and you stand uncertainly atop the tripod. Be careful lest you fall, Mother. Or are pushed from behind.’

  “Beware your own conceits, Pyotr. Especially vengeance. That’s a poison blade that cuts both ways. Seek to use it only with a clear head and purpose, then resheathe it as soon as you can.”

  ‘Do you mean disdain revenge like you did, Mother? When you butchered the Broderbund, slaughtered tens of millions during the ‘Revolt of the Ritter,’ as you dubbed the slaughter when it was really you and not the cowls who broke all the old rules and ordered all out genocide?’

  She sees it in his face. “Yes, I speak now from hard experience. Do as I say, not as I did. We shall speak no more of that.” She knows that he loathes the memory of the only night in all his boyhood that she came to see him in his room.

  ‘Impressive that you gave the kill order lying in a four poster bed, pushing out my bluing, dead brother. Poor little thing. He struggled to emerge between your bloody legs, turning blue and stupid with your gray cord wrapped around his neck. Just like Friedrich did before him, only he lived. More’s the pity.’

  “Never reveal your true thoughts and final mo
tives.”

  ‘I haven’t forgotten or forgiven what you named this blue thing, oh my dread Mother. Only in his stillbirth did you turn to me, your greatest disappointment. The thought is on your face even now: why must I give up my power as Dowager to this upstart weakling and over proud prince?’

  “Your uncertainty will be unnerving. Allies and adversaries will look off center, then come to fear your deviousness. That will leave you to choose who and when to deceive, or play straight.”

  ‘I know you secretly call this unnamed dead thing Karl Joseph Shaka XV. Do you think that I don’t know it, and what it means? You planned to usurp me with a dead child, named for a dead father! I was saved from your twisted plot by a twisted cord.’

  “A reputation for power is itself a form of power. It’s possible in politics to survive a very long time just on appearances.”

  ‘As you have, Mother. Pretending to high wisdom and statecraft, and so ruling where I should rightly sit. All in spite of you being a woman.’

  “If no single interest has dominance over the others, then you may rule them all. This is the essence of our way, the Oetkert-Shaka way that has kept us on the Jade Throne for centuries.”

  ‘Yet, in a quarter century as Dowager, what gains have you brought the Imperium by this old way of the balance? Not one of the Lost Children systems have you recovered! What new worlds have you added to our glory? None! What prideful things shall I write above your tomb?’

  “Since the Foundation Wars won by Karl Ferdinand, this has being our great ruling secret: we Oetkerts disperse power where all our rivals and enemies try to concentrate it in their hands.”

  “A truly novel approach.”

  “They think us weak, yet here we are, still seated on the Jade Throne. The imperfect, yet always shifting balance we make preserved the primacy of our entwined dynastic lines for 1,500 years.”

  “I do see it now, Mother. Tell me, what faction should I advance over others next? Who’s the gravest danger to us, right now? Who must I secretly court, so that we still set the tune?”

  “A wise question, at long last. I shall tell you.”

  And so Mary tells her son of her deepest fears about the men in gray, and whispers of quiet contacts she has with the dormant Broderbund, exiled to the Ordensstaadt. She confides it might be time to let the Brethren return, partway. That’s how she unwittingly authors her own death.

  ***

  The day after Mary tells Pyotr about her rising fear of SAC, and tentative and secret contacts with the High Council of the exiled Brethren, he makes his fateful choice. SAC and Sakura-kai urge him to it. His favored Admitted flatter him to do it. Above all, he’s seduced by pride. He must indulge his genius. He will defy Mary. He will defy 1,500 years of family tradition and secret strategy.

  He’s above her rules.

  He’s beyond her rules.

  He’ll break all the rules.

  Then his genius will rule.

  He chooses greater imbalance. He chooses the Special Action Commandos and Sakura-kai, while also opening contacts with the Broderbund that parallel her own. He becomes an initiate, holding hidden rank and invited to sit at the General Curia’s table and to play at high command. He affirms genetist and biopolitical doctrines even as he sends a secret envoy to Terra Deus. He’s in the void, plotting. He praises himself. ‘I choose to ride the wild tiger of radical change. I shall harness SAC’s rising power to my own, I’ll tame and own the Revolution before that wild and snarling beast eats its own children, and turns back to devour me. I’ll lead the movement in secret to my own ends, and in my cunning, I shall use the Brethren to help me tame SAC and Sakura-kai as well.’

  He speaks in brash tones and more honestly to his Admitted, about a core imperial ambition that has nothing to do with Purity and everything to do with his vanity. They egg him to do more. He tells them that “decision by force is the supreme law of Nature.” He declares that he’ll take the case of the ‘Lost Children’ worlds of the Imperium “before history’s true tribunal, not neutral arbitrators of the Golden Peace but the ultimate judges of greatness: force and war.”

  Openly defying Mary, a year before his 35th birthday and coronation, Pyotr publicly converts to Purity. For billions already in its sway, his confession feels like their awakening, the first breaking of a harsh winter’s last frost, the cracking of old ice in springtime. Acolytes rally to him like spring cornflowers in a bumper meadow, with rank upon rank of sunny upturned faces. Overnight, billions of ordinary folk turn optimistic in the extreme, They become orgiastic in newfound enthusiasm for the coming to power at long last of a vigorous young Tennō who understands that things in the Imperium must change; that the Old Order cannot continue. They believe that he is the man and this is the hour to change everything. Pyotr steps into the imbalance left by the Red Purge and pushes down hard on the scales. He makes it all so much worse.

  ***

  Chiyoko is a plain, even ugly woman. Following in her mother’s example, she’s uninterested in marriage, rejects that any man should control her by wedding her. Despite her gifts of high intelligence and artful insight, she is barred by her gender from the thing she might do best: rule the Imperium with prudence and wisdom. It eats at her, corrupting her slowly. She protests to Pyotr.

  “My brother, why do you defy our Mother?”

  “Why do you not?”

  “Because I believe in her.”

  “She does not believe in me.”

  “Perhaps you might earn her trust by behaving better?”

  “Mother cares nothing for my behavior. No more than she did about our slut father when he played with whores and adultery in the barrios of the inner city.”

  “I’ll not forgive you that remark.”

  “Forgive me or don’t, dear sister. I’m beyond your forgiveness.”

  “Leave aside your morals, then. At least you might listen to her political advice.”

  “She cares only for the Oetkert line. I serve a higher cause than family.”

  “Seriously? Family is the one and only thing you should care about and serve.”

  “Purity is a far higher cause. I shall be its instrument.”

  “Pyotr, how can you believe this nonsense? Yes, we Grünen are superior. Of course we are! But from our civilization and our ancient culture. Not from our genes! You don’t believe it, do you? Of course you don’t. You’re playing some game with Mother, but also with the throne, Be careful!”

  “No more, sister. I have a coronation speech to prepare and policies to write. I intend to hit the ground running with huge progressive changes once I’m Tennō. I will be a tornado of change.”

  “You, Pyotr? Write policy? When was the last time you studied anything, brother? Who’s really writing policies for you? Not the debauched wretches of your Admitted! So who? Are you already puppet to some hidden master, whose dark shape will loom over you on the throne? Which is it enthralls you more, the pseudoscience of Sakura-kai or the ancient prophesy of the mad monks?”

  “Sister, you would be well advised to tread more carefully in your speech. A few months more, and I will no longer tolerate such insolence or the disrespect that you show me today.”

  “Really? We’ll see about that. You’re not wearing Father’s crown yet!”

  ***

  “You taught him better than this,” Chiyoko tells Mary when she hurries to inform on Pyotr’s growing vanity and corruption.

  “He has been warned.” Mary’s tone is ominous. She’s appalled at his open, public turn toward Purity and determined to stop him. She confides in Chiyoko in deepest secrecy. “He has made his choice. Now I make mine.”

  “What will you do, Mother?”

  “For the good of the Oetkert family and the Jade Throne, he’ll not be Tennō. This reckless movement must not have him as their champion, or they could win the game at Court and drag all of us into war.”

  “How can he be stopped? Pyotr is Father’s eldest son. He has first claim on the succession
and the throne.”

  “First claim yes, but not the only one. Ready yourself, daughter. Your time to rule is here.”

  “Truly? I have been ready all my life, since Father died!”

  “I know, daughter. Still, this will be hard to do. Many will oppose a female monarch. As soon as we announce these changes to the Succession Rites and Law there’ll be huge outrage, and opposition.” Mary is right, as she so often is.

  ***

  The crisis within the Imperial Family confuses and divides the traditional elites as Dowager Mary moves within the Council of Elders to alter the line of succession, first to her daughter Chiyoko, followed by her second son Friedrich, moving Pyotr to third place. But too many who distrust Pyotr to the soles of his feet can’t abandon misogyny, it’s so rooted in their lives and the culture dating to the Founding. They won’t accept Chiyoko and they can’t accept Friedrich. They worry that, as one headman of an Old Family puts it, “a woman is unacceptable, while a halfwit Tennō Friedrich would be worse than a half mad Tennō Pyotr.”

  The elites divide into factions backing one claimant or another, mirroring the warring Jade Court. The factions leach into the civil service and the military, split Old Families apart, divide one world from another. Fleets and garrisons start to declare for Pyotr or Chiyoko, or proclaim neutrality should fighting start. And then it does, small scale but real. People die. The irony isn’t lost on watching Brethren, brooding in the Ordensstaadt. The worsening crisis portends civil war over which of their failed assassinations will rule them. Only this time, Brethren won’t control simpleminded Friedrich when the killing ends. It’s down to Prince Pyotr, SAC and the radical Purity way, or Princess Chiyoko backed by the formidable Dowager, and preservation of tradition and the Old Order by going far outside it to accept a female ruler.

  As for all the rest … choose! Civil war is coming, you must pick a side! But choose carefully, because nearly two years ago Mary Oetkert inadvertently tipped everything to Pyotr’s advantage. She showed him the way, gave him the logic he needed, provided a reason to act as he long dreamed of acting against her. ‘Mother is right. These monks still have a role to play. For their assistance, I shall promise much and deliver only a little. They are the past. My future is with the men of Purity. My destiny is to lead the Imperium in a Liberation War, then a war of conquest. The moment needs extreme imbalance. I’ll reverse it all later. To do that, I must plant the seeds of change even now.’ As he embraces Purity and throws the Imperium into turmoil, he turns in secret to the cowls. He contacts one of their closeted agents in Novaya Uda, then sends another secret emissary to Terra Deus. This one is not going there to improve his relations with the cast out Broderbund. He has a specific request to make, an offer of murder and alliance.