Sebastian of Mars

  Sebastian of Mars

  Book II 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/

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  Skeletons

  October

  West Texas

  Kitt Peak

  The Boy With Penny Eyes

  House Haunted

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  Halloween & Other Seasons

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  To my sister, Mary Jo

  One

  It’s not easy being a sickly kit. Especially when those around you are so strong. I watch my sister Amy at play, the way she leaps and runs and cuts at her playmates with her wooden sword, and I feel inadequate and left out.

  I am left out anyway, of course, being King of Mars.

  Or at least I will be, on the day of my fifth birthday.

  The very thought of Regent Parum turns my stomach.

  Some of the other grownups I like. I greatly look forward to Uncle Newton’s visits, since he always brings me such interesting toys.

  Most of all I miss not having parents. Amy doesn’t seem to mind as much, and I’m told she takes after our father, Kerl of Olympia. I’m told by Newton and others, especially the fat cook Brenda, that I am more like my mother: thoughtful and taken to flights of dreaming. My mother was very deep, I am told, and I miss her terribly, even though I never knew her. One of Amy’s friends, the evil Charlotte, told me in one of her snits that Amy and I were in the same room when my mother was murdered, on the very day of her coronation. This is a horrible thought, and I was successful in having Charlotte banished for a short time from the royal grounds. But her father, Senator Misst, is an important person and my ban did not last. In fact, at Xarr’s urging, I was forced to apologize to Charlotte in front of her father, a stern shriveled old man with a wizened face and sharp distrustful eyes. It was for the good of the realm, I was told. While I was doing it I felt a burning anger within me that almost came out – later I discussed this with my teacher and guardian, Thomas, who laughed.

  “You have just taken your first bitter pill,” he said, eyeing me with amusement.

  “The funny thing is,” I answered, “that while I was doing it I wanted to scream that this was not right, while at the same time I understood somewhere in the back of my mind why it had to be done.”

  He continued to look bemused, and I asked him why.

  He answered: “You have had your very first lesson as a king, and you taught it to yourself!”

  I suddenly felt very proud of myself, and strutted around for the rest of the day practicing bestowing favors, even if no one took me seriously. I even pardoned Charlotte from the death sentence I had, in my imagination, condemned her to. But, as usual, she had the last laugh, pulling a wire she had strung taut across a hallway as I passed in my faux royal robes (made of quilted bedding) and tripping me up.

  “A fine fall for a king!” she shouted, laughing as she ran away. The bruise I ended up with landed me in bed for the rest of the day.

  It was Thomas, as usual, who tried to explain things to me, pulling a stool up close to my bedside.

  “You must realize, Sebastian, that you are different from the other kits. In more ways than one. There is your lineage that separates you from the rest, of course, but there is also the matter of your . . .”

  He hesitated, pointing to my bandaged leg, resting on two pillows atop the coverlet I had lately used for raiment.

  “My frailty?” I finished for him.

  He reddened slightly with embarrassment, his whiskers twitching. “Your body is frail, but your mind certainly is not. And who knows, with your coming adolescence your body may catch up to your mind.”

  I nodded. “Then, for now at least, I will have to beat them with my mind, instead of my body.”

  “It is not as simple as that,” he said. “You must realize that frailness of body will be taken as weakness, in and of itself. Already Regent Parum has moved before the Assembly that your ascendency to the throne be postponed until such time that you prove your . . . what he calls ‘heartiness.’”

  “Then I will challenge him in the assembly.”

  “It is not so easy, Sebastian. Parum has allies in both the senate and the hall, some of them very powerful.”

  “The law states very clearly that I will be crowned on my fifth birthday. And that is only a few weeks away.”

  “You must understand that the law is not made of stone. It is a fluid thing. Your mother made it that way to better serve the people.”

  I smiled slightly. “My mother was very wise. So you are talking of the clause, ‘unfit to rule.’”

  “Exactly.”

  “And Parum will use it against me.”

  He edged his stool closer, and lowered his voice. “Very likely.”

  “Do you fear that we will be overheard?” I said in a loud whisper.

  “There is that possibility. Parum has become very secretive lately, and I have heard that there are spies who have sworn allegiance to him–”

  “This alone is treason!” I shouted.

  Thomas’s eyes widened in alarm. When this happened the streak of light short black fur which crowned his forehead disappeared altogether, which was usually a cause for mirth. But not today.

  “Lower your voice, Sebastian!” he hissed.

  “I will not! And I don’t care who hears me! There is nothing in the law that allows the regent this kind of power!”

  “Perhaps not. But it is something that must be dealt with.”

  “If he denies me the throne, he hordes all power for himself.”

  Thomas moved his stool even closer. He was nearly whispering in my ear, now. It was then I noticed that from his eyes, and the faint odor of terror he exuded, that he was very afraid.

  “Sebastian,” he said, lowering his voice even more, to a mere whisper, “you must listen to me. This may cost me my life. But as I swore allegiance to your protection, so too did I swear allegiance to your ascension to the throne. There have been plots within plots building for some time, ever since the trouble in the east began. There are those who say that Parum has not done enough in your name to quell this trouble. There are others who say he has done too much. And then, as always, there are those who do nothing. They are the most dangerous of all. In your mother’s time they caused, through their inaction and stupidity, the downfall of the first republic. They may soon cause the destruction of the second.”

  Some of this I knew, or had deduced through my own observation or deduction. But to have it placed so baldly in front of me frankly frightened me. I knew there was growing trouble in my empire, but I had no idea it was so pervasive or imminent. My war games had been daydreams, my fo
rm of play since I couldn’t wield a wooden sword like my sister.

  “Is it that bad?” I whispered.

  “Worse. The trouble to the east has been intensifying. Parum keeps most of it out of the media but he cannot prevent whispers. It is said that Frane’rar has resurfaced.”

  A chill went through me. “This is impossible. She is dead.”

  He shook his head slowly. Now he did whisper into my ear. “Parum falsified her death. That was not her body that was displayed last year, but that of another F’rar. General Xarr had tests done on the body before it was cremated. Only a few know, and until now it was better for the public good that it wasn’t common knowledge. Soon, I’m afraid, everyone on Mars will know.”

  I turned my gaze on him, and hoped it looked as steely as I meant it to be. I had practiced this hard, regal look many times in my mirror, when alone.

  “Then I must take the throne immediately.”

  He drew back. “That is impossible!”

  “Anything but. It is only four weeks until I am five. In an emergency the coronation can be performed at any time after my fourth birthday. I do know the law, Thomas.”

  I watched the stunned look on his face, which had lost all color. But I saw that he was staring through me, at the door to my chambers.

  I turned, wincing with pain at the twist in my ankle, and saw Thomas’s page, a young feline named Fotrel, standing in the doorway.

  “Fotrel, come in!” I said, trying to sound hearty. “Join our discussion, and then we can play a game of Jakra after Thomas is gone!”

  “I’m sorry, my lord, but I must speak with Thomas alone.”

  “Nonsense! What you say to him you say to me – that is an order!”

  He bowed, which made me instantly regret my harshness. He turned slightly toward Thomas as he rose.

  “There is an emergency Council meeting,” Fotrel said. “Newton has arrived from the west.”

  “I will attend immediately,” Thomas said.

  “As will I,” I said, hoping my voice sounded as firm as I wanted it to.

  Both of them turned to stare at me.

  “Sebastian –” Thomas began.

  I quieted him with my stare.

  Thomas looked at Fotrel. “Advise the Council immediately.”

  Fotrel, still looking pained, nodded and turned away.

  To me, Thomas hissed in fierce whisper, “Attend, Sebastian, but do not open your mouth.”

  I had often dreamed of the Council Chamber. I had even snuck into it, once, when I was barely a year old, and barely able to stand on two feet instead of four. It was rarely unlocked, but that day a meeting held in my name (as they all were) had just concluded and the servants were late in arriving to clean up. On all fours, I had stealthily crept into the room. I had only just begun to explore when I was lifted bodily and found myself face to face with the scarred warrior, General Xarr.

  “What have we here? A midget King?” he roared, and then he laughed, making the scar which ran from the crown of his head down to the edge of his lip on the right side blush with crimson color.

  And then, to my shock, he hugged me to himself and sighed!

  As he drew me away to place me on the floor I caught a good look of the room I had abandoned: a huge junto wood table, nearly blood red in color, covered with charts and unrolled maps and the leavings of gemel tea in their cups–

  And that, until this day, was the only look that I had ever had of the inside of the Council Chamber.

  I was carried in today on a litter, feeling embarrassed. I could feel the eyes on me of the Council members, and was chagrined that I could not even enter under my own power.

  I was placed in a corner, where two chairs had been pushed together seat to seat so that the cushion I lay curled on could be put there.

  “Move me closer to the table,” I said to the two attendants, who ignored me.

  “I said moved me closer!” I demanded, and a whispered conversation between Newton and Xarr ceased, bringing silence to the room.

  Thomas made a motion to the attendants, who immediately bowed and angled the chairs closer to the wooden table, which did not seem quite as large as it had when I was a little kit.

  I nodded briefly, and the two servants bowed and left the room.

  Parum stood and cleared his voice, an annoying habit. He tilted his head, covered in a coiffed mass of reddish-brown fur, in my direction. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a distinguished guest today.”

  It sounded condescending, and I frowned, until a quick look from Thomas made me turn my features bland.

  To my surprise, a host of warm looks turned my way, and there was light applause.

  Thomas stood. “The Prince sustained a slight injury, or he would join us at table today.”

  Again the warm looks, until Charlotte’s father, the F’rar Senator Misst, stood and announced curtly, “I am afraid that the Prince was injured during play, and that my daughter was to blame – a thousand apologies!”

  He bowed his shriveled, nearly hairless pate, and the gesture, as well as the words, sounded genuine.

  I was about to say something, but Thomas gave me a quick shake of his head as Parum announced – putting both of his large pawns, covered in copious fur the same color as that on his head, flat on the table and leaning forward – “Very well, then! Let us begin.” There was a gavel next to his right paw, and he grasped it and rapped it once in practiced nonchalance.

  Everyone was now seated – and for the next twenty minutes I was entirely ignored.

  And yet, I was fascinated. Every point that was made – by Newton, mostly on scientific matters, by Xarr, on the military angle, by the other Council members, the beautiful Rella, Speaker for the Hall, charming Pellas, like Charlotte’s father a prominent senator and also of the F’rar clan, and the others – was glorious to watch. There was an ebb and flow to the proceedings; a give and take that was impossible to describe or understand without being there. I had read of government proceedings in countless books, studied transcripts, even – but the real thing was much more dynamic and alive.

  This was how representative government – what my mother had fought so hard for, and ultimately gave her life for – worked.

  I was in a trance.

  So much so that when the meeting ended abruptly, with Parum suddenly grasping and rapping his gavel again, I was stunned.

  “Is that all there is to it?” I said to Thomas, as he approached me.

  “It was a two hour meeting!” he said. “And mostly dull as porridge!”

  “It went by like five minutes.”

  Thomas now stepped aside as the Council members filed past me to give their best wishes, as well as condolences on my most current injury.

  I noticed that Parum was the only one among them who did not do so, leaving abruptly through the same doors I had snuck into when I was little.

  Newton examined my leg. “Your injury is nothing! It will heal quickly, I’ll wager. We will speak tonight about the stars, before I leave?”

  “Yes, please!” I nearly shouted, losing my newly acquired royal bearing.

  “Good.”

  He was gone, leaving me alone with Thomas.

  “A word of caution,” Thomas said. “The next time Rella addresses you, do not look at her like you would have her served to you on a plate.”

  “But she is beautiful!”

  He laughed, the first mirth I had seen in him today. “She is beautiful, and she is the Speaker of the Hall of Assembly, the largest democratic body ever on the planet Mars – and she is also married and also as devious as a serpent when she needs to be. And she is F’rar.”

  I must have blushed slightly, and he laughed again, as he motioned the two attendants now waiting patiently in the doorway to come and bring me back to my chambers. “And you listened to my prime advice, and kept your mouth shut,” he said. “Very good.”

  Two

  That night Newton, as promised, came to see me.

  I w
as tired, but brightened immediately when he entered my chambers. Though he was an old man, he moved with a grace I desperately wished to possess, and spoke always with an elucidation I envied and sought to mimic.

  “My petite prince!” he announced, smiling, his lean face, lightly furred, breaking in a sly smile. “Have you been studying the night sky while I was away?”

  “You know what I wait for, Newton!”

  “And with my next trip back from Sagan, you shall have it. The Optical Guild artisans have been hard at work on it – as well as other things.” His face darkened for a moment.

  “Tell me about my telescope!”

  “Ah!” he said, his face brightening. “It is a fine instrument, better than my own, even. The lens will be 150 millimeters wide – a good diameter. Good enough to study Earth and the other planets with, as well as some of the other riches in the night sky!”

  “It is cloudy tonight,” I said sadly, pointing toward the open window of my room.

  “Indeed. But I have brought another useful toy that may prove instructive.”

  He reached into his tunic and removed a tube with a lens on the end.

  “Bah!” I said. “That is nothing but a hand torch! You brought me one last year!”

  “This is a bit more than that,” he said mysteriously, and then reached out to extinguish the electric light in the room.

  We were bathed in complete darkness, except for the outline of the window which let in the faint lights of the city of Wells.

  “Watch,” Newton whispered.

  There was a faint click and then the room was filled with stars!

  “You’ve banished the clouds!”

  “Not quite,” he laughed, as I reached out to try to touch the point of light nearest my bed. My hand went through it, and now the point of light was painted on my paw itself.

  “You’ve shrunk the night and brought it indoors!”

  He laughed louder. “You are certainly your mother’s son. Again, not exactly. But we have been able to duplicate the night sky, and project it for study on nights such as this.” In the dark, he handed the instrument to me. “I hope you enjoy it, when clouds or dust storms come.”