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= FAR WARS =

a novel in the Empire of Time series

by John Argo

13.

Before the official announcements, followed by my formal request for Zara's hand, and Trask's welcoming me into his family, I would live separately in the city. The clan had large office buildings with internal apartments. By that I mean quiet, echoing halls with central gardens and fountains, surrounded by luxurious suites full of filtered sunlight from alabaster and soapstone skylights. All manner of quiet servants moved quietly about cleaning, serving, and obeying. I could have had all sorts of interesting women for company, but I am a man of principle. I chose to have Zara and her sisters visiting me at every opportunity. Sometimes they brought their husbands as well, all but sweet young Artemi who regarded me with intoxicated eyes.

Trask kept me busy and put me to work in the city. I was to become the ammanus or right hand man of a talented older executive named Charlemain. Charlemain de Granger was from lesser nobility in the northern lakes region of Tellerine's largest continent. He was a chubby man with a hard face, gone totally gray, with colorless eyes and personality, but hard and capable the way Trask liked his executives to be. Trask was a generalissimo, and these were his colonels. As it turned out, I barely met Granger before the war, so there's not much to tell about—he and his family were all killed in the first days of massive bombing.

My family were to come from Luxanne and stay with us for the ceremony. That meant my father Vilo, an agricultural domineer on our home world of Luxanne, my mother who taught mathematics at the Uni, my brother Manel, and my sisters Livin and Haril. That was the plan, until the Swarm attacked.

It seems the Holy Mother and her entourage, as well as two high-ranking flag officers of the Arm governance, had deorbited and were now guests of the Tellerine Administration in Mayeril.

In retrospect, those weeks of innocence and joy were the happiest of my life. I was about to marry into the wealthiest of the powerful clans of Tellerine. I remember long, wonderful afternoons under the lingering sun on the great lawns of Upholder House in the northern suburbs of Corduwaine. The captains and their wives of the military came and went at endless champagne parties, because Romen and Caleo were both handsome army officers and these were their colleagues at polo, at maneuvers, at political jostling around the council and parliament. Caliste Sender, a dusky, slender Upholder beauty with a ball of black frizzy hair and evening-blue eyes presided over cocktail parties, always with lingering looks toward me. Her husband, a powerful but bullish-looking older man, had been a political choice of Trask. I think, in all honesty, that Caliste was a tragic figure; her eyes betrayed longing and hunger; I could almost hear her long, silent cry for rescue. Zara must have known, but she didn't renounce her sister. There was, rumor had it, another sister somewhere floating out there, a twin of Zara's but Zara avoided the subject. Zara was, if anything, loyal to a fault. She was an Upholder before anything else. She was Trask's absolute favorite, and he treated her like a crown princess—which she was, in effect, though the Tellerine people avoided all pretenses at monarchy and empire. Tellerine culture was austere and business-oriented, although obviously they had the same oligarchs and aristocrats as any other society. By contrast, my home world of Luxanne was too simple and under populated—an agricultural backwater—to have anything more than wealthy, drunken ranchers and bloated country club doctors and lawyers for an upper crust.

Caliste clearly would have run away if it were not for family loyalty. I think it is the reason Zara nurtured and supported her, to keep her in the fold, maybe even to prevent scandal if Caliste ran away. Caliste contented herself with displays of wealth, while her husband was usually away on business, much of it offworld and outsystem. I can't imagine how lonely and frustrated she was.

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