So this girl, called a princess. Would she die? The war was going against them, he knew, and the same symbolic grammar that presented her with the prospect of power if things went well, also dictated her use, her expendability, if all failed about them. Rank demanded its tribute; the obsequious bow or the mean stab, according to the outcome of this struggle.
He saw her suddenly old, in the flickering firelight. He saw her shut in some slimed dungeon, waiting, hoping, scabbed with lice and ragged in sack-cloth, head shaved, eyes dark and hollow in the raw skin, and finally marched out one snow-filled day, to be nailed to a wall with arrows or bullets, or face the cold axe blade.
Or maybe that too was too romantic. Maybe there would be some desperate flight to asylum, a lonely and bitter exile spent growing old and worn, barren and senile, forever remembering the ever more golden old times, composing futile petitions, hoping for a return, but growing slowly, inevitably, into something like the pampered uselessness her upbringing had always conditioned her for, but without any of the compensations she had been bred to expect from her station.
With a feeling of sickness, he saw that she meant nothing. She was just another irrelevant part of another history, heading – with or without the Culture’s carefully evaluated nudges in what they saw as the right direction – for what would probably be better times and an easier life for most. But not her, he suspected, not right at this moment.
Born twenty years earlier, she might have expected a good marriage, a productive estate, access to the court, and lusty sons, talented daughters… twenty years from now, perhaps an astutely mercantile husband, or even – in the unlikely event this particular genderist society was heading that way so soon – a life of her own; academic, in business, doing good works; whatever.
But, probably, death.
High in a turret of a great castle rising on a black crag above snowy plains, besieged and grand, crammed full of an empire’s treasure, and he sitting by a log fire was a sad and lovely princess… I used to dream about such things, he thought. I used to long for them, ache for them. They seemed the very stuff of life, its essence. So why does all this taste of ashes?
I should have stayed on that beach, Sma. Perhaps after all I am getting too old for this.
He made himself look away from the girl. Sma said he tended to get too involved, and she was not totally wrong. He’d done what they’d asked; he’d be paid, and at the end of all this, after all, there was his own attempt to claim absolution for a past crime. Livueta, say you will forgive me.
‘Oh!’ The princess Neinte had just noticed the wreckage of the bloodwood chair.
‘Yes,’ Keiver stirred uncomfortably. ‘That, ah… that was, umm, me, I’m afraid. Was it yours? Your family’s?’
‘Oh, no! But I knew it; it belonged to my uncle; the archduke. It used to be in his hunting lodge. It had a great big animal’s head above it. I was always frightened to sit in it because I dreamt the head would fall from the wall and one of the tusks would stick right into my head and I’d die!’ She looked at both men in turn and giggled nervously. ‘Wasn’t I silly?’
‘Ha!’ said Keiver.
(While he watched them both and shivered. And tried to smile.)
‘Well,’ Keiver laughed. ‘You must promise not to tell your uncle that I broke his little seat, or I shall never be invited to one of his hunts again!’ Keiver laughed louder. ‘Why, I might even end up with my head fixed on one of his walls!’
The girl squealed and put a hand to her mouth.
(He looked away, shivering again, then threw a piece of wood onto the fire, and did not notice then or afterwards that it was a piece of the bloodwood chair he had added to the flames, and not a log at all.)
* * *
Three
Sma suspected a lot of ship crews were crazy. For that matter, she suspected a fair few of the ships themselves weren’t totally together in the sanity department, either. There were only twenty people on the very fast picket Xenophobe, and Sma had noticed that – as a general rule – the smaller the crew, the weirder the behaviour. So she was already prepared for the ship’s staff being pretty off the wall even before the module entered the ship’s hangar.
‘Ah-choo!’ the young crewman sneezed, covering his nose with one hand while extending the other to Sma as she stepped from the module. Sma jerked her hand back, looking at the young man’s red nose and streaming eyes. ‘Ais Disgarb, Ms Sma,’ the fellow said, blinking and sniffing, and looking hurt, ‘Belcome aboard.’
Sma put her hand out again cautiously. The crewman’s hand was extremely hot. ‘Thank you,’ Sma said.
‘Skaffen-Amtiskaw,’ the drone said from behind her.
‘Heddo,’ the young man waved at the drone. He took a small piece of cloth from one sleeve and dabbed at his leaky eyes and nose.
‘Are you entirely all right?’ Sma said.
‘Dot really,’ he said. ‘God a cold. Blease,’ he indicated to one side, ‘cob with be.’
‘A cold,’ Sma nodded, falling into step alongside the fellow; he was dressed in a jellaba, as though he’d just got out of bed.
‘Yes,’ the young man said, leading the way through the Xenophobe’s collection of smallcraft, satellites and assorted paraphernalia towards the rear of the hangar. He sneezed again, sniffed. ‘Sobthig ob a fad on the shib ad the bow-bid.’ (Here Sma, immediately behind the man as they walked between two closely parked modules, turned quickly back to look at Skaffen-Amtiskaw and mouthed the word. ‘What?’ at it, but the machine wobbled, shrugging. ME NEITHER it printed on its aura field, in letters of grey on a rosy background.) ‘Be all tought it’d be abusing to relax our ibude systebs and cadge colds,’ the young crewman explained, showing her and the drone into an elevator at one end of the hangar.
‘All of you?’ Sma said, as the door closed and the elevator rolled and rose. ‘The whole crew?’
‘Yes, dough dot all ad the sabe tibe. The peebil who’ve recobered say id’s very pleasid abter it’s ober.’
‘Yes,’ Sma said, glancing at the drone, which was keeping a standard pattern of formal blue on its aura field, apart from one large red dot on its side that probably only she could see; it was pulsing rapidly. When she noticed it she almost started laughing herself. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, I suppose it would be.’
The young man sneezed mightily.
‘Due for a spot of R-and-R soon, are we?’ Skaffen-Amtiskaw asked him. Sma nudged the machine with her elbow.
The young crewman looked puzzledly at the machine. ‘Jusd bidished sub, adjilly.’
He glanced away to the elevator door as it started to open, Skaffen-Amtiskaw and Sma exchanged looks; Sma crossed her eyes.
They stepped into a wide social area, floored and walled with some dark red wood, polished to the point of gleaming; it supported a variety of richly upholstered couches and chairs, and a few low tables. The ceiling wasn’t particularly high, but very attractive, composed of great flutes of gathered-up material rippling in from the walls and hung with many little lanterns. From the light level, it looked to be early morning, ship time. A group of people round one of the tables broke up and came towards her.
‘Biz Sba,’ the young crewman said indicating Sma, his voice seeming to get thicker all the time. The other people – about fifty-fifty men and women – smiled, introduced themselves. She nodded, exchanged a few words; the drone said hello.
One of the people in the group held a little bundle of brown and yellow fur, cradled against one shoulder rather as one might hold a baby. ‘Here.’ the man said, presenting the tiny furry creature to Sma. She took it reluctantly. It was warm, had four limbs arranged conventionally, smelled attractive and wasn’t any sort of animal she’d ever seen before; it had large ears on a large head, and as she held it, it opened its huge eyes and looked at her. ‘That’s the ship,’ the man who’d handed her the animal said.
‘Hello,’ the tiny being squeaked.
Sma looked it up and down. ‘You’re the Xenophobe?’
‘Its representative. The bit you can talk to. You can call me Xeny.’ It smiled; it had little round teeth. ‘I know most ships just use a drone, but,’ it glanced at Skaffen-Amtiskaw, ‘they can be a bit boring, don’t you think?’
Sma smiled, and sensed Skaffen-Amtiskaw’s aura flicker out of the corner of her eye. ‘Well, sometimes,’ she agreed.
‘Oh yes,’ the little creature said, nodding. ‘I’m much cuter.’ It wriggled in her hands, looking happy. ‘If you like,’ it giggled, ‘I’ll show you to your cabin, yes?’