The servitor then withdrew from the antechamber.
“You can move the chair,” had said Julian.
“Then they might suspect I had discovered the door beneath the chair,” had said Otto.
“They already know,” said Julian.
Otto had regard him, puzzled.
“You remember the screens on the ship?” asked Julian.
“Yes,” said Otto. He had eagerly learned all he could on the ship which had brought them to the summer world.
Julian had then pointed to an aperture in the wall, high, near the ceiling.
It was then that Otto had risen and gone to sit, cross-legged, to one side. It was then unlikely that he could be seen from the vantage of the aperture.
It had been shortly thereafter that the servitor had entered with sherbets, and had looked quickly about the room.
He had seen Otto in his place.
Otto did not doubt but what he had entered to ascertain his position in the room.
Shortly after they had been ushered into the room, better than two hours ago, the servitor had appeared, offering them a choice between the ices and sherbets.
“Inform the emperor we await his pleasure,” had said Julian, in fury. He had been already deeply angered, from what he interpreted as the first insult, that of the outer gate, when the herald had inquired as to the identities of those he should announce. The audience had been prearranged. Was he not anticipated? Was he not recognized? Did they not know who he was? Then, what Julian took as a second insult, he had not been immediately introduced, warmly welcomed, into the presence of his kinsman, the emperor. Rather, he had been ushered into this room, to wait, as though he might be no more than some petitioner, or sycophant, some provincial magistrate, from some minor world, some ambassador from some unimportant client world, such things.
Flavored ices, not sherbets had been brought.
The ices, in their bowls of translucent quartz, perhaps from the mines of Jaria, brought then in all likelihood through the pass, or tunnel, of Aureus, had melted, how forming soft, foamlike pools of yellow and purple.
They had not been touched by either Julian or Otto.
The sherbets were now on the table, in their shallow silver bowls, with matching silver teetos, which is perhaps best translated as ‘spoons’. They are, however, actually narrow, hollow, rodlike utensils with a small, concave, rather spatulate termination. The concave spatulate termination justifies us, I would think, in speaking of the utensil as a spoon. I should add, however, that it may also be used to draw fluids upward into the mouth, and, in this sense, can function as a straw.
Julian left the sherbets where they had been placed. He did not touch them, no more than the ices. He felt, perhaps, that the acceptance of even these trivial hospitalities might somehow seem to indicate an accommodation to his inconvenience, as though he might then seem to find it at least marginally acceptable. Otto, although he was commonly curious about many matters, did not, either, sample the ices or the sherbets. There had been openings beneath the chairs.
He recalled how the servitor, in his second visit to the room, bringing, surprisingly, unrequested, the sherbets, had looked about, and then, relievedly, marked his position. His guess had been correct then, it seemed, that he had not been visible from the aperture, not in that location.
Julian continued to pace the room.
Otto, the giant, did not betray impatience.
Yet some have lamented that greater courtesy was not shown in this matter by the imperial court, that the audience was not more promptly granted.
Otto watched a fly alight on the rim of one of the bowls of sherbet. There were flies here, too, then, even within the palace.
Then there came another fly, and another.
So there are flies in the palace, thought Otto. They were there, crawling there, like raisins, on the rim of a silver bowl, a vessel worth perhaps a rifle, even on a world where such were scarce, the possession of which could mean a magistracy. He wondered if the flies comprehended the perils of their delicious arctic? Doubtless some would become lost, perhaps even die, freezing, ensnared in the viscous trove.
Otto considered the couches about the table. On reclined on them while eating. That was something one had to learn to do, to eat in such a position. Was it so comfortable, so luxurious, so civilized, really, he wondered. They had not had such arrangements on the Alaria, he recalled. To be sure, worlds differ, customs differ, and one can get fewer people at a table with such an arrangement.
But Otto did not think he would care to get used to such an arrangement. It is difficult to rise quickly from such a couch, to unsheath a weapon, to defend oneself. Better the stool or bench, which could be kicked back, from which one could spring to one’s feet.
Julian sat down, on one of the curule chairs.
He did not move it.
That is dangerous, my friend, thought Otto.
Perhaps it is always dangerous to sit in such chairs, on the high seats, thought Otto.
But men will sit upon them, and kill to do so. Do not all thrones rest on no more than a latch, or bolt, which might, perhaps when one expects it least, be withdrawn?
Otto’s thoughts, as he waited, drifted back to the Meeting World, and a time when Julian, in virtue of complex circumstances, had been little more than his prisoner.
CHAPTER 5
“Do not cry out, or betray emotion,” had said Otto to his companion, who was at his heel, in a short, ragged tunic, much as might have been a slave. But on his body there was no sign of bondage, nor had he been branded, that the mark on his body might bespeak one subject, as much as a slave girl, to exchange, to barter, to gifting and pricing.
“I will not,” said Julian.
They were flanked by Ortungs.
An Ortung ship, one which still bore the scars of the encounter with the Alaria, had come to orbit over Varna, which was the world to which two life rafts, or escape capsules, caught in similar gravitational geodesics, had drifted, that following their departure from the Alaria. In the first capsule had been a gladiator, one who had been carefully trained in the school of Pulendius on Terennia, he, and a prize won in contest, a dark-haired girl, named Janina, who need not significantly concern us, as she was slave. In the second capsule had been one man and three women. The three women were as follows, a wealthy, lovely, highly intelligent, mature woman, and two younger women, a slender, attractive blonde and an exquisitely figured, delicately and sensitively featured brunette, the sort made for chains, and surely one beautiful enough to bring a good price in almost any market. The man had been a young naval officer, an ensign in the imperial navy.
It was a muddy track they followed, as there had been a rain that morning.
The landing craft, or lighter, as one might think of it, a small vessel suitable for comings and goings, for negotiating the shallows of space, from the Ortung ship, had come down gently, not far away, in a circular, rain-soaked meadow, small, delicate animals fleeing beneath its descending shadow and heat. From it several individuals had disembarked, the broad-bladed, green, wet grass, fragrant, edged with rain, soon cutting at their ankles, muchly different from the grass about the craft, farther out oddly dried, despite the invading dampness surging back into the meadow, and close in, even yards from the twelve thrust chambers, blackened and burned. Among those disembarking were Otto and Julian. They had come from Varna. The entire matter had to do with a challenge.