The Light of Murdered Suns (excerpt)
New Athens, Mars
11 July TE 353 (2506 CE)
In ninescore years, Grigry Hoister has tried every method of divination. He’s read the cards and tossed the stalks, graphed images in tea leaves, and spent painful hours with the Ephemeris of Known Planetary Systems. Hundreds of small animals, alien and domestic, have spilt their entrails under his knife, he knows the wrinkled landscape of his own palm so well he dreams it, and he’s been everywhere: Lourdes, Delphi, Ekla, Wakmarrel, New Siwa. He’s consulted the great simulations on Borshall and the Elders of the Kien Khwei.
And nothing…nothing…has ever enabled Grigy to see the future better than a cold glass of Porto Castelacia ’07. Any light red wine works almost as well.
Genetics, he admits, helps: Five generations of Hoisters before him bred to conserve and strengthen the family’s inherited psi abilities. Precognition is the most fickle gift, coming and going like a rich eccentric aunt—but Grigry could sometimes woo it with a comfy room, just the right music…and wine.
He’s on his third glass of the evening. Cradled in an antigrav web woven by a cloud of tiny pixies, Grigry floats in a corner of his study—a mahogany-paneled room with a plush carpet of deep maroon. A wallscreen shows a view from the surface, ruddy Martian gravel and the highlands of Tharsis stretching away to the northwest. There, still wrapped in morning mist, the crown of Olympus Mons shows above the horizon like a giant looming over the world.
Grigry’s wrinkled skin and craggy face are dark in the rosy light; his white hair, plaited into a long braid, nearly matches the shade of the wine. With eyes closed, he breathes softly and creeps up on a future vision.
Visions are like reflections on soap bubbles. Try to direct them with anything more substantial than a breath, and they disappear. Grigry knows better; he follows the vision as it wafts this way and that, from one unexplained sight to another. Losing oneself in time…that’s easy. Finding oneself, now there’s a task.
Light.
Brilliant, searing, agonizing light that sterilizes space. Light that carries both life and death. Light unbearable.
“Grigry? I’m sorry to disturb you.”
The bubble bursts and the light vanishes. Before Grigry’s eyes hangs an image of a younger man, his son Issa.
He’s known the boy for a century and a half, can read Issa’s face like a familiar book. “What is it, lad? Who’s coming?”
“The Emperor. She’s on her way, arriving in fifteen minutes for a private meeting with you and Jamal and Hannya. What do you want us to do?”
Grigry sighs. “I don’t suppose there’s any hint of what she wants?”
Issa shakes his head. “None. We just now got these orders.”
“All right. If it’s to be private, she doesn’t want attention. Park her flier in the secure bays and send someone to meet her in person. Tell Laquetta to go, she speaks politics. I’ll have Brynhilde assign a conference room where we can talk.”
Issa blinks. “Do you think there’s going to be trouble?”
Grigry nods. “Well, I rather suspect Her Majesty’s coming to execute us all by her own hand. Tell everyone to put on their company manners.” He waves dismissal, and Issa’s holo vanishes.
Stupid boy. Relations between the Hoister Family and the Throne have been smooth since the days when Anna’s brother Jef occupied the seat a dozen years ago.
Grigry raises his eyes. “Brynhilde?”
“I heard.” The great AI that runs the settlement here at New Athens—as well as the rest of the Hoisters’ galactic business holdings—sounds calm and pleasant as always. When he was young, Grigry always regarded Brynhilde as much older and wiser; lately, she’s more of a contemporary.
She continues, “I’m setting up the Pyxis Room for Imperial conference. Her botler tells me to expect a delegation of two.”
“Interesting. Where are Jamal and Hannya?”
“Hannya says she'll meet you there. Jamal is on his way to your location.”
“I’d better get dressed, then. The formal black kaftan, I think.” Pixies lift him to a vertical position; he raises his arms and they sweep off his robe, replace it with undergarments and black brocade trousers and full-length kaftan. Then they adjust his legs so he sits, his feet a few centimeters from the floor.
The door snaps open and Jamal steps in. The same age as Grigry, Jamal looks and moves like a man of sixty. His features seem carved from brownstone, his eyes dark and his bald head magnificently smooth. His clothes are shades of grey—dashiki, severe pleated kilt, and thigh-high boots.
Grigry inclines his head. “Do you have any clue what this is about?”
“My sources in the palace are mum.” Jamal frowns. “I can’t think of anything we’ve done lately to rile Her Majesty off.”
“If your network doesn’t know anything, then Anna’s keeping her intentions to herself.” For more than a century, Jamal’s supervised the Family’s business espionage. Grigry shrugs. “I suppose we’ll have to play it by ear. Stay alert.”
Pyxis is one of several dozen meeting rooms, large and small, perched atop the rim of the domed crater that contains New Athens. Through windows four meters high, the view is staggering: one one side, the terraced balconies and teeming throngs of the settlement; on the other side, the ochre desolation of the endless Tharsis plains.
As soon as Jamal and Grigry enter the room, Hannya blinks into existence at his side. She stands like an ancient dryad, her skin like smooth brown bark and her short hair a crown of grey lichen. In addition to the usual Hoister psi talents, Hannya is also a teleport.
“What’s this to be about, Grigry?”
Grigry shakes his head. “I don’t know.” Hannya, Jamal, and himself…all that’s left of the Hoister Family Sixth Generation. Last remnants f the Family’s former greatness. To face the Empire.
Why?
He raises his eyes. “Brynhilde, tell Laquetta she can bring in Her Majesty’s delegation.”