A Confusion of Princes Read Online Free PDF Page B

politeness. It was so she could wrinkle her nose to indicate her distaste for such a lowly creature as myself.
    I didn’t raise my own visor. It seemed a better snub than wrinkling my own nose back at her.
    Even though I could see only the narrow band of her face from halfway up the nose to just above her sharp brown eyes, I was immediately struck with a sense of familiarity. But I knew I couldn’t have met her before. I’d never met any other Princes.
    So why did she look so familiar?
    ‘You are logged as a visitor,’ she replied. ‘If you depart from the authorised route to the temple, you will be in breach of Naval regulations and may be detained.’
    She sent something to someone else by mindspeech at the end of that, but I couldn’t pick it up. I presumed it was a communication to the Imperial Mind. Soon I would be connected too, and would not be so much in the dark.
    ‘Uh, what is the authorised route?’ I asked.
    Atalin didn’t bother to reply. She just sniffed, her visor slid down, and she waved the mekbi troopers away before suddenly taking off to jet back to the cube. Her Master of Assassins lingered for a minute or so, looking down at Haddad, and again I caught the edge of a whisper of mental communication. It must be odd, I thought, for assassins to work against each other when they were also all priests of the same Aspect, but I suppose it was no more strange than the competition of Princes. The whole Empire was based on this competition, after all.
    ‘I have the route. We must get inside before our oxygen reserves fail,’ said Haddad when we were alone. ‘The atmosphere here is not sufficient to sustain even augmented life.’
    I hadn’t noticed that my suit was indicating it could no longer refresh my air and that it was drawing on the small reserve supply of oxygen.
    ‘How dare they just leave us here!’ I spluttered, wasting some of that precious oxygen. ‘I will protest!’
    ‘Not recommended, Highness,’ said Haddad briefly. He was already pulling at my elbow, urging me forward.
    ‘But I am a Prince of the Empire!’
    That cry sounded like a pathetic bleat, even to my own ears. Haddad did not reply, so I stopped the bleating and increased my pace.
    We entered a pedestrian airlock of the cube two minutes before my emergency oxygen reserve ran out, even though I had tuned my metabolism to operate on a very low pressure indeed. It was pleasant to reoxygenate, but as I was learning could be expected, Haddad did not let me dwell on it. He hustled me through the airlock, past a guard of mekbi troopers who slammed satisfactorily to attention as I passed, and straight to a drop shaft. There he paused to test that it was in fact operating— the fail-safes had not been subverted—and that it would provide a suitably sedate descent some twenty floors down to the reception rooms of the Temple of the Emperor in Hier Aspect of the Noble Warrior.
    I felt some slight relief as we entered the main reception hall, though I did not relax my guard. I had learned that lesson already. Here, instead of waterfalls to be silenced, groups of acolytes struggled to keep dozens of crystal chandeliers in place by Psitek energy alone, in yet another test of their suitability to become full priests. As they stood directly under each huge, spiky array of lights, there was considerable incentive for the acolytes in each group to work together.
    We passed through without incident into the next chamber. This vast room resembled a junkyard, save for a central avenue that was kept clear. Everywhere else, acolytes laboured over complex Mektek devices, though it was not clear to me what was being tested, for the acolytes did not seem to be in any danger, unlike those in the outer room.
    I breathed easier as we reached the end of the chamber, presuming that we would now enter the temple proper and I would be safe, at least momentarily, from assassination.
    But passing through the next gateway hub, we did not enter another