Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy Read online

  QUEEN OF MARS

  Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy

  By Al Sarrantonio

  Smashwords Edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2011 Al Sarrantonio

  Cover design by David Dodd / Copy-Edited by Patricia Lee Macomber

  Cover art courtesy of: http://dandzialf.deviantart.com/

  LICENSE NOTES:

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ALSO FROM AL SARRANTONIO & CROSSROAD PRESS

  Novels:

  Moonbane

  Skeletons

  October

  West Texas

  Kitt Peak

  The Boy With Penny Eyes

  House Haunted

  Collections:

  Toybox

  Halloween & Other Seasons

  Buy Direct From Crossroad Press & Save

  Try any title from CROSSROAD PRESS – use the Coupon Code FIRSTBOOK for a onetime 20% savings! We have a wide variety of eBook and Audiobook titles available.

  Find us at: http://store.crossroadpress.com

  To Nancy Gregory

  Part One

  The First Battle

  One

  I went to see Father and Grandmother today.

  It had been a long time, but Newton insisted. I spent the morning practicing music (tambon), and the early afternoon reading (The Runaway Kit, fiction, which I did not like, and A Short History of the First Republic of Mars, which I greatly enjoyed – I must ask Rebecca, my lady-in-waiting, to bring me a meatier volume on that period), and then I was taken by airship and motorcar to the Arsia Mons Science Guild facilities. It was dusty, and old scarred Xarr was there, turning his head to look at me with his rheumy eyes. He always wears his military uniform, which is somehow endearing and annoying at the same time, but he gave me a wink and a slight sour smile and made an elaborate bow as I passed.

  “Your majesty!” he effused, with sarcasm.

  I sniffed and walked on, leaving him to chuckle behind me.

  “He is insubordinate,” I said out loud, to no one in particular, but to my surprise Rebecca, at my side, answered me.

  “He only seeks to bring you down to size, Princess,” she said, with warm humor in her own voice.

  I turned to glare at her, but her warm smile remained. “You are a wonderful young feline, Clara, but you are far too serious and far too young to be so. Your father was too young to assume the crown when he was forced to do so, and he was two years older than you. In many ways, you are still a kit—”

  “Don’t use that word!” I shouted, stamping my foot. I stopped in the corridor, and those behind us, old Newton and Thomas and a few others, halted also. I was infuriated by the smug look of tolerance on all their faces.

  Filled with sudden rage, I turned on them. Even as Rebecca reached out to prevent me, I swatted her paw away.

  “I will soon be your Queen, and you will obey me!” I shouted. I was pleased to see the smiles melt from their faces – though Newton’s ancient visage was inscrutable, and his eyes, as always, troubled me. They had seen much, more than I ever would, and sometimes I got the feeling that he saw straight through me, and knew more about me than I ever would myself.

  I turned in the corridor and began to march once again toward the far door which led to what terrified me more than anything in the world. My fear was abated somewhat by the pleasure I drew from the sound of those following me in step, as if on command. I turned to Rebecca, but was surprised to see Newton in her place, staring down at me balefully.

  “The Princess and I will proceed alone,” he said, and while it sounded like a suggestion its result was a command, and the others, including my maidservant, withdrew immediately.

  I wondered if their haste was leavened with relief.

  I felt Newton’s withered paw, which felt like a claw, descent lightly on my shoulder. Briefly he drew me toward him.

  “Do not be afraid,” he whispered.

  I looked up at him, trying to put cold fire into my eyes, but instead burst into tears.

  “I cannot go in there, Newton!” I sobbed, turning my face into his tunic. His claw patted my back. “I cannot face those...ghosts!”

  “They are more than ghosts, princess. You know that.”

  “But less than real! They haunt my dreams, every night! They frighten me!”

  “Is it their images that frighten you, or what they represent?”

  No adult had ever spoken to me so forthrightly, and at that instant my respect for Newton magnified. I pulled my tearful face from his tunic and looked up at him.

  “Please explain,” I requested.

  A smiled touched his lips. “Always so serious!”

  “What is there not to be serious about?” I replied. “I have a republic to rule, great shoes to fill—”

  “Ah!” he interrupted me. “Could this be the problem? Could it be that you fear that you will not measure up to your predecessors?”

  Without my bidding, anger returned. “I have no fear of this!”

  He bent down to gaze at me levelly. His face in old age was almost devoid of fur, now, his cheeks pink and wrinkled. His eyes looked even more enigmatic.

  “Would it help,” he whispered, “if I told you that you have it in you to be greater than either your father or grandmother?”

  I must have blinked, and again, against my will, tears filled my eyes. In a moment I had melted into his arms and was sobbing more uncontrollably than before.

  “You are right...” I said. “I know I have great things in me. But I feel so young.”

  He patted my back, and let my crying jag, the first I had ever had, pass. “Poor, Princess Clara,” he said, wistfully, “always so strong, never showing weakness. Even as a little kit you were serious in play and in lessons. Hardly ever a smile, never letting anything more than the task at hand rule you. You never let yourself be a kit, Clara, and now that you are one no more it is too late.

  “But I tell you this, and listen to me. You have in you qualities that are greater than either your grandmother Haydn, who was impetuous and headstrong, or your father Sebastian, who was, in the end, rash and too daring. You have a more solid head on your shoulders than either of them – and they were great felines.”

  By now I had stood back from him, noting the wet spot on his tunic, and stood staring at him.

  “Do you mean these things?” I said.

  He laughed shortly, which was not something he often did – though his eyes were not laughing. “Yes, I do. But can’t you smile once in a while, Clara? It is the one thing you should work on.”

  “Then I will work on it,” I said, seriously.

  He smiled and then faced the door before us. “Shall we go in?”

  My heart clenched, and I felt fear rise up in me, but I swallowed hard and said, “Yes, let’s do so.”

  Darkness.

  And then a silhouette of purple light, and another. They were side by side, as they often were, and seemed to be conversing, even though there was utter silence in the room. I held Newton’s paw, and he drew me forward, to the foot of the dais upon which two dark thrones stood, and the violet figures, vague still, on them.

  Behind my father’s th
rone stood, as always, his ever-present manservant, Thomas, who bowed.

  “My niece Rebecca serves you well as lady-in-waiting, Princess?” he asked.

  “Very well, thank you.”

  Newton announced, facing the two blue figures, “I have brought the Princess Clara.”

  Both silhouettes quickened in brightness – though the larger, that of my grandmother, flared more quickly. I could see her face, now, in scant outline, the smiling eyes and mouth. Now I heard an electrical hum from somewhere, and smelled faintly the odor that wafted through my nightmares – a blue, cold smell like that during a storm, a strange, unnatural odor that had nothing to do with human flesh.

  “It is good that you brought her now, Newton,” Grandmother Haydn said, and held her paw out. “Come here, Clara, and stand close so that I can see you.”

  I did so, holding my fear at bay.

  She bent forward, a purple ghost, and stared at me with eyes that seemed to look through me.

  “You have grown so!” she said, and something like a laugh issued from her spectral mouth. She turned to regard Newton, who had remained at the foot of the dais. “Do you know who she resembles?”

  “I had rather thought her father, around the eyes.”

  “Yes, but her face is that of her grandfather, my husband, Sebastian’s father. Kerl...” For a moment she stared at nothing, and seemed lost in memory.

  I turned to regard my father, who had not said a word. He sat staring at me as if I was a ghost.

  “As I said,” Grandmother Haydn said, back from the past, “it is good that you have brought her. We have had messages from the far west, and they are not good.”

  I turned to regard Newton, who seemed to stiffen.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Apparently, Frane has been sighted.”

  At the mention of that name my blood ran cold. This was the monster who had caused not only my grandfather’s death but my father’s also. The last we had heard, she had been killed near Burroughs two years previously. A body had been produced, authenticated, burned, and buried.

  Grandmother Haydn continued, “It seems old Frane took a page from my own book, and faked her own death,”

  “But the Science Guild did tests on that body—”

  My grandmother held up a hand. “If you remember, you had only an intact hand and arm to work on. The rest was horribly mutilated.”

  “She cut off her own limb?” Newton said incredulously.

  “Apparently. If you remember, the body was in pieces – it was claimed she was drawn and quartered...”

  Newton stood in disbelief.

  “It is true,” grandmother continued. And she is gathering an army. She has been seen in the Solis Planum region.”

  Newton’s nearly nude face went pale.

  It was my turn to interrupt. “But Grandmother, the F’rar have been loyal for more than five years! My mother is F’rar, and I am half F’rar! She could not wrest them from the Republic a third time!”

  She looked at me with surprise, and then a smile formed. “Well, I see that you have not only grown, but that your mind has grown, too, Clara.” She looked at Newton and then back at me. “She is gathering an army of Baldies.”

  “What!” I blurted out.

  “A vast one,” grandmother continued, while Newton remained silent. “In five years, and for years before that, even as she fought Sebastian, she has been forging alliances with the wild cats and their brethren. It is said that she cut off her own left arm in front of the four Baldie chieftains, and that they then pledged their allegiance to her. Even the more untamable wildcat clans have been brought into the alliance by force, threat, or assassination. And she has done this away from any prying eyes.”

  “Then let her stay in Solis Planum, and rule over madmen!” I interjected.

  My grandmother looked down at me with faint disapproval. “Your studies are not complete, Princess. She means to use this army.”

  I could not keep quiet. “Against whom?” My fear of being in this room was overcome by my self-confidence. I laughed. “There is nothing in that wasteland for a thousand miles to any compass point! They will be squabbling amongst themselves within the week—”

  “Princess—” Newton tried to interject, but I would not be stopped.

  “If they come within a day’s march of any inhabited city, we’ll destroy them from the air!” I continued, my confidence building. “We have the F’rar to help man our army this time. She has no hope! And she is one-armed, to boot!”

  I looked first at my father, who sat stone still, and then my silent grandmother, and then Newton, whose faint look of hope faded as he watched Grandmother Haydn shake her head.”

  “The Science Guild facility at Solis Planum was attacked this morning. Reports from our gypsy friends are incomplete, but by all accounts the Baldy army completely overran it.”

  I looked at Newton, who said nothing, and then at my grandmother, who was silent. It was my father who spoke now, for the first time. Even though he was a ghost of sorts his eyes bore into my with a painful close intensity, and I had the feeling that if he could he would jump from his chair and enfold me in his arms.

  His voice, when he spoke, was precise.

  “How is your mother, Clara? How is my wife Charlotte?”

  “She is...the same.”

  “I see. To other matters, then. What remains unsaid, Clara, is that the Science Guild facility at Solis Planum was the most important weapons staging area on the planet. It was built there in secret to test, develop and store the most advanced weapons on Mars, with technology produced from Old One discoveries. It is by far the most dangerous place on the surface of the planet.

  “And now Frane owns it.”

  Two

  As usual, the curtains in my mother’s room were closed, giving the room the quality of perpetual twilight. There was a breeze, bringing in the sounds and smells of the city of Wells far below this palace room which, despite its height, I had taken to calling The Dungeon.

  “Mother, am I disturbing you?” I asked, letting my voice show that, while I cared for her, there was business to discuss and she would have no choice but to speak to me.

  “How are you, daughter?” Her voice was faint from the divan where she lay curled. As always she sounded as though she had been awakened from sleep.

  “There are things we must speak about, mother,” I continued.

  “I was having the most curious dream,” she said, raising her head to look at me in the gloom. “In it, you were a little younger than you are now, yet your father was still alive.”

  “You’ve had this dream thousands of times, mother. And father is still alive. I’ve just been to see him.”

  I could see her visibly shudder. “That thing is not your father! It never could be...”

  “Mother, I must ask you a few things about our family...”

  “We have no family. It is just you and I.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Your father, my grandfather, Senator Misst, was a traitor to the republic, and sits in prison to this day. Is it possible he has been in contact with Frane?”

  “Frane is dead...”

  “She is not dead, mother.”

  I sensed a sudden tension, a sharpening of interest, in the room. My mother raised her head to look at me with her still-beautiful eyes.

  “What do you mean, Clara?”

  “She is alive, and gathering an army of Baldies in the west. What I need to know from you is if there is any possibility in the world that our family would betray the republic again.”

  She looked at me blankly.

  “Mother!” I snapped. “Act like the Queen you are!”

  She swooned back onto her divan, and I knew that now the tears would follow.

  “I am no Queen, and never was. Your father was King, and he is dead. You know I have given over my regent powers, in deed if not in words, to the senate.”

  “And it has been bad for Mars. You shou
ld have been...”

  Again she raised her head.

  “Stronger, Clara?” she said. “When my whole life ended before it began? I loved your father from our days as kits together. All my life I planned what it would be like when we were betrothed. And then my dreams came true, only to be snatched away by that...horrible thing, Frane.”

  “Who is still alive.”

  “Yes...”

  “Tell me, mother: is there any chance on Mars that Senator Misst has been a traitor once more?”

  “I don’t know. You would have to ask him. Frane is alive...”

  Instead of weeping, which was what I expected, she swooned down onto the divan and was asleep in a few moments. I drew near, and saw the ever-present potions nearby that Newton had provided so that she might be kept out of the sanitarium and at least nearby. She was whispering under her breath so I drew close to this mother I had barely known, who had been one step from mad since my birth.

  “Ha...” she was saying, her breath sweet from the elixir, which smelled faintly of peppermint and more serious stuff.

  I put my ear even closer to her whispering mouth.

  “Happy...” she breathed.

  I turned my face to regard her own, more beautiful than my own severe features would ever be, and kissed her once on the forehead, above her sleeping eyes, before leaving.

  Three

  My reading that night (fiction had been totally abandoned for the Short History) was interrupted by a sound outside my window.

  Ever wary of assassins, I slipped from my bed, dousing the light, and drew the blade which I always kept (rather melodramatically, as Rebecca chided me) under my pillow, and drew myself quietly against the wall. The blade was cold against my side, but I held it tight. It had been Queen Haydn’s own.

  I edged my way toward the window on the far side of the room. This afternoon’s breeze had increased to a steady blow, and the curtains were roiling wildly. Outside it was typical summer, hot and dry, with red dust in the air from the west which we Wellsian’s were used to as a constant presence. The curtains parted as one, giving me a view of the nearby beautiful Assembly Hall which my grandmother had built before her own assassination. There was only the flapping of the curtains now.