Palace Read Online Free PDF

furious and worried. Every now and then he would come to the side of the open carriage and lean in to discuss something with the man sitting behind the saccule driver. Tall and powerfully built, with dark skin and the slash of old scars across his face, the man would answer, then shrug as if dismissing danger. He wore a plain black tunic belted with metal segments that, Vida was willing to guess, were generating a forceshield. Next to him sat a beautiful woman, her skin pale, her long hair streaked red and blue, dressed in a fancier version of the grey uniform; blue tattoos covered her face and hands. Behind them, in the back seat, sat two young men and a boy, all uniformed. They looked bored and the boy, miserable.
    The bodyguards began chanting, the deadly low sound of angry Garang Japat. Suddenly the crowd in front of the cart found it could move, after all. As the two vakr lurched forward and plodded into the square, Vida realized that she was seeing Karlo Peronida and his family, close by and live, not on the vidscreens. The crowd recognized him, too, and began to call out, Karlo! Karlo! the saviour of Palace! This was the military genius who had beaten back the Lep invasion of fourteen years before. Karlo had ridden the popular wave to establish himself as Palace’s First Citizen, the first time a sapient from off planet had ever held the post. At an order from Karlo, the cart paused below the terrace to allow the gridjockeys their holo op. The woman by his side, Vanna Makeesa y Parrel, was his current marriage partner, whose position as the head of the ruling Council made Karlo’s position doubly strong. Everyone knew that her clan wallowed in money, the richest family on Palace, especially so ever since Vanna had destroyed their only rivals, the L’Vars, some thirteen years past. Vida wondered how you could hate a family so much you’d get them all killed, even by legal means, even if they were all traitors, betraying Palace to the Leps like the L’Vars had done. Vanna had lived long enough to nurse enormous hatreds; at two hundred years old, she was the oldest woman, if not the oldest sapient, on Palace. The constant twitches of her head and fluttering motions of her hands showed that she’d pushed the life-extension process to its limit. At another order from Karlo, the young men in the back seat stood up to smile and wave for the pix on the terrace. She recognized Wan, who would be his father’s heir if Karlo got his way and made the office of First Citizen hereditary. One of the Not-children, about twenty-two, Vida remembered, he was an extremely handsome man with his deep green eyes and his light brown skin - his mother, Karlo’s previous marriage partner, had been a holostar and a great beauty. The small boy - as pretty as a girl, slouched back in his seat, now, looking at no-one - was the youngest son, Damo, whom the grids had labelled a cyber genius. The third man, well into his thirties and Karlo’s son by some woman he’d never even married back on his homeworld, was tall and rangy, all rough angles and big homely grin. Vida stared, fascinated by his square face, too long in the jaw, and his mouth, too thin for its stretch. You rarely saw anyone ugly on Palace, where every birth had to be licensed and every genotype examined and corrected for such flaws. All at once he flexed his long, muscular arms, grinned, and jumped up to the carriage’s frame, which swayed under his weight. He waved to the crowd, who shouted his name in delight. Pero! Daring Pero! He dug into a trouser pocket and pulled out something - a handful of small coins, which he flung to the crowd. A mob of children rushed forward; the carriage swayed alarmingly. Pero tossed his head and laughed as the pix above leaned over dangerously far to capture every second. Chanting fast, two Garang charged up, swinging stunsticks. When the mob fell back, one of the Garang leapt onto the carriage so gracefully it seemed he floated. He laid one