“The Army will protect her.”
“For how long? Something must give.”
Avery did not like the thought of that. “How did you survive—the Revolution, I mean?”
Idris indicated Ajaun. “Friends.”
Ajaun actually blushed, obviously pleased at the honor. “I wasn’t even born then,” he said, as if Avery couldn’t have figured that out.
“No, but your parents were, and others that shared their ideals,” Idris said. “The government was a fragile, beleaguered thing. Certainly, the notion of democracy was a noble one, one worth the experiment, but ultimately, without a guiding personality and the vision to back it up, it would fail. And when that happened, there I would be, waiting in the wings, to take control. To restore order.”
“And reward those who had protected you, no doubt,” Avery said.
“Naturally. And they would have deserved it,” Idris assured Ajaun. “But do not make their loyalty sound so crass, Doctor. The ones who protected me did not do it for money or power. Surely, you can see my friends have plenty of that. They did it out of patriotism. I know that may sound odd, as you would no doubt label them traitors, but it is the case. They only wanted to restore order to Ghenisa.”
“And you think that time has come.”
“When Haggarty officially seizes power, there will be even greater bloodshed, Doctor. Many who support Denaris and the New Dawn will continue to revolt against him. He is strong, but unpopular. There will be chaos.”
“Soon there may not be any country left to fight over.”
Idris nodded eagerly. “Yes yes, the thing from the sea. Well, obviously I’m assuming that the world goes on, somehow, someway, that Ghenisa endures, however battered and bloodied. If it doesn’t, none of this matters. But if it does, it will need a firm hand. To that end I have been finding all the scattered survivors of the royal line. My branch almost ended completely, and I have not been successful in bearing children—though I have tried.” He smiled, and it was unexpectedly ingratiating. “I have tried. There are many branches of the royal house, though. Your wife was the remnant of one, therefore so is Ani. There are others here, in this house.” He indicated Oris. “Over a dozen. Some had lived in alleys and ghettos, some had found suitable accommodations like myself, but most had gone into hiding among the middle class, like Mari’s parents. Ajaun has graciously agreed to play host to what I laughingly call the Royal Hotel.”
“Why would you show me this place? I could inform others.”
“Denaris? Certainly. But I would be gone before the first Army boot set foot on the property, and they would find no trace of me.”
“Is your influence that extensive?”
“Ask yourself that. I found you.”
In the Parliament Building, no less, on the very day I arrived. “And you want Ani to join you.”
“Of course. We want to present a solid face to the pubic when we reveal ourselves. A strong face. And Ani belongs to a branch that is higher up than many. She could not be queen after me, nor after the one who is in line behind me, or the one after that, she is not that highly placed, but she would be an important aspect to the new, reenergized and repurposed royalty. Moreover, she belongs with us. We are her family.”
“I’m her family.”
“Of course.” Idris raised his hands placatingly. “And you would join us, as well. After all, you’re my, what, cousin-in-law?” He smiled. “What say you?”
Avery set his tea cup down and stood. “It’s time for me to go.”
Idris did not look upset. Instead, he rose to his own feet, and the others followed. “I understand it’s a shock. I know you’re loyal to the Prime Minister, and I sympathize with you for it. But it’s important to bring Ani to us now. If you wait until Grand Admiral Haggarty makes his move, she could get hurt in the violence that that will entail. I would not want that. No one would.”
“I will not give up on the Prime Minister.”
Idris dropped his charm and said bluntly, but not meanly, “Denaris’s government is living on borrowed time, Doctor. What organization is left is running out of money. The war emptied its coffers, as did feeding the refugees and the rebuilding afterward, and this second war against the Navy is taking what’s left—what do you think has been keeping the Army in line?—not to mention Haggarty was able to make off with a substantial amount. He got the gold and left the Prime Minister with the bank loans from foreign countries. All of which is to say that Denaris’s government can’t sustain itself.” He indicated Ajaun. “But my friends can renew those coffers. We can provide the solidity that Ghenisa needs. And ... we have other sources. The Ysstral Empire, for example.”
Avery failed to find words.
“You need time to think,” Idris said kindly. “That’s fine. Personally, I like Prime Minister Denaris quite a lot, and I admire her greatly. No harm would come to her. In fact, once we have Ani I have no problem waiting for Denaris’s government to run its course, for Haggarty to take over before I make my own move. I would much rather topple him than the Prime Minister. I will not have her blood on my hands.”
Avery moved toward the door.
Idris, in a very low voice, almost above a whisper, said, “Has Ani been having strange dreams?”
Avery spun toward him. “How did you know?”
Idris spread his hands. “Bring her
to me, Doctor. Bring her to me.”
Chapter 9
The next day Avery and Layanna set to work cataloguing and analyzing the pieces of Starfish tissue in the laboratory they had been given, teams of junior scientists working under them. They all worked relentlessly, trying to find some weakness of the material. They exposed it to heat, cold, radiation, anything they could think of. Days passed, but the material seemed impervious. They knew the creatures had blood and flesh beneath all that armor, even some sort of vascular system—a heart, perhaps. If they could pump a poison into a main artery, or anywhere deep enough inside it, they might just be able to kill it.
They tried arsenic, strychnine, cyanide, and numerous other obvious lethal agents, failing to even so much as weaken the blood cells, or what approximated blood cells, in the sample tissue. They kept trying, searching for more esoteric compounds, even reaching out to the non-humans in the city; Hissig only had a few small populations of non-human intelligent races, but they were there, and their leading minds, some enemies of Haggarty, eagerly lent their assistance in response to Denaris’s (albeit secret) entreaties. Though they were able to provide poisons unique to their cultures and physiologies, these too proved ineffective.
In addition to all this, Layanna designed a type of automated drill, similar to that used by oilers, that could be carried by a lightning-rod-protected helicopter or dirigible and deposited on the back of a Starfish. What with all the extradimensional energy surrounding the creature, it would prove virtually impossible for Layanna to set down on its back and bore a hole through it herself. They would depend on the drill to do that for them, and then she would drop through the new-formed cavity in its exoskeleton from the safety of an airship before any of the Starfish’s defenses could kill her. Only then could she administer the poison, assuming one could be fashioned. To that end, once she organized the team to build the drill, she more or less left them on their own while she worked with Avery on developing a substance lethal enough to end the creature.
More days passed, and meanwhile the oncoming wave of Starfish (most of the papers were calling the creatures that now, independent of Avery, though the yellower periodicals still referred to them as the Things or the Horrors from the Deep) destroyed one island after another. Reports from up and down the coast confirmed the presence of multiple such creatures, wiping out islands in a broad swath along the section of the sea fronting the continents of Consur and Urslin, and all moving toward the mainland. One was said to be coming straight for Hissig. Refugees that had fled to the islands to escape the onslaught of Octung now fled back, and Ghenisa was more overburdened with the homeless and destitute than ever before—people who then, hearing reports of the approaching Starfish, began to pack their bags to flee Ghenisa for parts further inland. More replaced them.
It was a world of refugees, with camps set up in any available space; charity groups, churches and even the overburdened government tending to them, but it was not enough. Every group had been pushed to its breaking point, not least the refugees. Crime ran rampant. The police went on strike before Prime Minister Denaris forced them back to work.
Another issue vexed Avery. Early on, he found time to meet with Prime Minister Denaris about finding and keeping an eye on Sheridan in an effort to prevent her from delivering the Atoshan relic to whoever Davic’s contact was, but Sheridan proved elusive, and deadly. Two of Denaris’s agents failed to return from their assigned tailings, and after that the agents tasked with watching her did so too cautiously to produce any appreciable results. Avery was forced to realize that he could not stop Sheridan delivering the relic, and in all likelihood the contact already possessed it. All Avery could do was hope this didn’t prove disastrous.
On the sixth day of work in the laboratory, he and Layanna were interrupted by an official aide.
