22

 

Meloku had never needed to take acting lessons or have programs fake a talent for it. She’d been acting since she was a child, pretending to be happy to see her parents, to go to school. She hadn’t been herself for so long that she’d forgotten who that person was.

She attended the papal court only on its last day. When Queen Joanna entered, Meloku stood along with the rest of the spectators. Every day of her trial so far, Joanna had worn a different and fabulously elaborate gown. Meloku had no idea where Joanna had found the money. Probably creditors hoping to recoup their costs when she was restored.

This morning, Joanna’s dress was blinding, virginal white. Chastity and innocence. Though Joanna and Andreas had consummated their marriage, it would have been ridiculous for a queen to remain unmarried and unheired. Joanna aimed to put herself back on the royal marriage market.

She’d gotten exactly what she wanted.

This morning, Clement embraced her in front of hundreds of spectators and the bitterly muttering Hungarians. In a clear voice, the pope apologized profusely that such suspicion could ever have fallen upon such an obviously virtuous woman as her. Joanna said nothing, blinking and wiping away tears.

Meloku cheered with the rest of the spectators. All life in the multiverse was performance. The demands upon the actresses were about to get much higher.

Her new secretary, Galien, sat beside her. She caught his probing glance. He’d scheduled a meeting with Joanna later that day. Meloku had never shared her purpose. Galien was sharper than most of the men she’d met here, but he never asked the obvious question.

That afternoon, Meloku waited in the sitting room of de Colville’s manor. It was a nice, quiet little room. Not perfectly soundproof, but, aside from Galien, whom she’d left to answer the door, the servants had been dismissed to their quarters for the afternoon.

Joanna arrived promptly, wearing the same white gown. She brought two officers of her court: middle-aged men, portly, and self-serious. Notaries or lawyers. Not even her principal advisers. As Joanna ignored them, so did Meloku.

Formalities first. Meloku said, “Congratulations on your restoration, your radiance.”

“I have a long way yet before I’ll be restored to my throne.”

“A distance that’s a great deal shorter with the church’s backing. The Hungarians don’t have the ability to hold Naples. Your acquittal robbed them of their only justification for the war.”

Joanna wisely didn’t answer. She had no need to reveal the strength of her position. Everyone in Avignon knew that Meloku was in Clement’s inner circle. She had only come because she believed Meloku was going to ask, on behalf on Pope Clement, for favors in exchange for her acquittal. “Am I to understand that you, a woman, are representing the church…?”

“I represent a higher power. God wants to spread the power of the church farther than ever.”

“I might interpret that to mean His Holiness is trying to gather support for another crusade.”

“Eventually. First we must consolidate the church’s hold in our own lands. Italy, even.”

“My people of Naples are the most God-fearing in the world.”

“I’m sure they are. The fact remains that God is dissatisfied with the state of governance in Christendom. His Holy Church is not respected as it should be.”

Joanna glanced to the courtier on her left. He rolled his eyes. Joanna was reputedly sincerely devout, but words like Meloku’s only weighed so much in the theater of her world’s politics. She seemed bemused, but it was clear that Meloku’s time was up. “I’m sorry, Lady Akropolites. If Clement wants to use me to fight his wars, he needs to pick a better time than a year of pestilence. And he certainly could have picked a better messenger.”

It was a shame, in some senses, that Joanna had been the first monarch to visit during Meloku’s time here. Meloku had gotten to understand and appreciate her a little more during the days of her trial. She was exceptional here, a woman ruler on a continent that didn’t often allow those to last long.

And now Meloku had to take all of that away from her.

As Joanna turned, her courtiers collapsed.

It happened with neither warning nor spectacle. Their eyes fluttered, their knees buckled, and they hit the floor like felled wood. The walls reverberated with the impact.

Joanna only saw one of them fall. Her mouth opened in shock. It took her a moment to notice that the other had fallen, too.

She spun toward Meloku. She looked as though she’d been about to ask for help. Then she saw Meloku’s eyes.

For too long, Meloku had been working like a mouse – keeping behind the holes in the wall, hardly making her presence known. That was a way to learn about a world, but hardly suitable for shaping it.

One thing that stifled her guilt was that it felt really good to stop pretending that she was one of these people.

She raised her hand. The skin above her knuckle slit open. A diamond-tipped dart shot free. The dart whipped past Joanna and pierced the doorknob. It penetrated the wood behind and stopped halfway into the door frame. Hooks speared out from each end of the dart, digging deep, sealing the door to the wall.

Joanna didn’t even see it. She might have felt a whisper of air, but she was too busy gaping at the weeping wound on Meloku’s wrist. Meloku said, “I told you. I’m not here on behalf of the pope or any temporal authority. I’ve come from a much higher power. The highest you’ll ever know.”

Joanna backpedaled. She grappled for the door and jerked her hand back from the splintered wood. She turned, but didn’t have time to do more than see the shattered doorknob before Meloku reached her.

Joanna started to scream, but Meloku cut her off with one hand over her mouth. Another swiftly compressed her throat. Joanna tried to strike, but Meloku’s muscles were like ironwood. No matter how hard she slapped, Meloku remained unmoved. After fifteen seconds without breath, Joanna gave up the fight.

Meloku eased the pressure on her throat, and let her gasp air through her nostrils.

“I have a very important mission,” Meloku said, soothingly, “and so do you. Those of your class who work with God will be privileged above all others. But I need to secure your cooperation before I can tell you anything more.”

Meloku curled her ring finger to touch the side of Joanna’s neck. She doubted Joanna ever felt the needle pierce her skin. Soon, Joanna began to relax. Her legs went limp. Meloku held her upright. Her stare traveled through Meloku’s.

This was one of the easier things about dealing with purely biological humans. Demiorganics only made things more complicated. She could see the rules under which people like Joanna operated. Manipulate their blood and brain chemistry, manipulate the person. Engender an addiction…

Any person who might otherwise pose a problem could be turned into a tool.

Gradually, Meloku released Joanna’s mouth.

Meloku asked, “How do you feel now?”

“In love,” Joanna said, from somewhere else.

“You’ve never felt God’s presence until now.” Meloku once again touched her finger to Joanna’s neck. “Before I explain what I’ll need from you, let me show you what worship is like.”

 

Infrared showed Galien sitting in the corner of the foyer. He stood when he heard her coming. “God’s blood, what took so long? I thought I heard someone falling. I nearly ran up–”

She waved him silent. It wouldn’t have done her reputation any good to have someone hear how often her secretary invoked God’s name in his oaths. “Queen Joanna is entirely on our side.”

Galien ran his hand through his hair as he tried to recover his equilibrium. Unlike so many other men on this plane, he was always clean-shaven. She’d found him buried deep in a clerical office, tallying accounts. He’d been only mildly cowed to see her hovering over his desk, which she appreciated. When she’d come to Avignon, she’d never thought that Cardinal de Colville would be more than a temporary ally. Better to start with someone below her and build them up, and leave them always indebted to her. Galien had only been too grateful to accept quintuple his salary. He could be blunt-spoken, but he never disobeyed her.

He asked, “What kind of favors will Her Majesty expect of us in return?”

“None. You misunderstand. She’s on our side. We’re not on hers.”

He stood dumbfounded. He hurried to catch her going back out to the street. Finally, he said, “You’re either lying to me, lying to yourself, or you’re the most persuasive woman I’ve ever met.”

She allowed him a smile. “Wait until after our next meeting to make up your mind.”

They were only a few minutes late to her next appointment. Three men in ostentatious red hats waited to meet her in one of the Palais des Papes’ smaller dining rooms. Meloku idly wondered how the cardinals had gotten their hats under the door frame. This time, Galien stepped in beside her.

Cardinal de Colville stood. Meloku watched him. He may have been friendly in private, but the company of his fellow cardinals required him to act differently. “Well?” he asked. “You’ve had the courage to call us here, for what purpose I couldn’t say. Do you have the courage to speak?”

She said, “To be honest, I’m surprised you came. You’re not accustomed to coming at a woman’s beck and call.”

Young, wide-bellied Cardinal Regnault said, “As a favor to you and to your friends, we would be glad to listen to anything you have to say, Madam Akropolites.” By “friends,” he meant the pope, of course.

Meloku said, “I’ve been watching and listening to the church these past few months, and it’s become clear that the church is failing in the obligations left to it by St Peter. I came to Avignon a convert from the schismatic Eastern church. When I followed the course God charted for me and turned here, I had hoped to find a church more deserving of God.

“It’s plain to everyone inside and outside the church that your reputation is not what it ought to be. Kings and emperors ignore your judgments. Heresy is rife. The people make jokes in the streets about the venality of cardinals.”

De Colville was used to dealing with scolds. He had a stock response. “Man’s irreverence is one of his eternal sins. Fools will always make light of the church.”

“No,” Meloku said. “They do it because they’re right.”

The chilly silence that followed gave her the chance to take their measure. She said, “Kings flaunt your powers because they know you have none. Heretics sense people’s dissatisfaction. They can’t lead those who aren’t willing to follow. And everyone makes light of the church’s venality and corruption because the church is venal and corrupt.”

The three men stared at her in silence. Meloku stared right back.

“I don’t know what’s possessing her to act like this,” de Colville told his companions.

“You’ve heard this from more voices than mine,” Meloku said. “Correspondence from all over Christendom has said the same. The church’s control slips everywhere. More importantly, it’s losing respect. Between your nepotism, appointment packing, and taxation, half of Europe is ready to desert you at the slightest provocation. The pestilence may provide them with it. Already there are new mendicant orders and penitent movements everywhere defying papal authority.”

Meloku had chosen Avignon to be her base of control because she’d thought it the best place for any single person to influence Europe. That didn’t mean she’d thought it was a good one. There were no good places on this blighted little plane. Without her, the papacy’s simony, hypocritically lavish lifestyles, and selling of indulgences would reach a head. Absent change, the church would fracture.

The last cardinal asked, “And what made you decide this was so? A message from God?”

“Yes,” Meloku said. “It’s the reason God sent me to Avignon, and the reason he sent the pestilence to ravage the world.”

The cardinals looked at each other. While none of them showed any sign of getting up, Meloku figured that was just inertia. She couldn’t drug everyone in the world like she had Joanna. She was only one person. She was going to have to use more conventional means to control men like these.

Like terror.

Meloku glanced between them. Cardinal Regnault had an elevated pulse. He was the youngest at the table, a nephew of the Duc de Berry. Naive. Impressionable.

“By this time three days from now, two of you will be dead,” Meloku said, looking directly at Regnault. “Struck down by pestilence. The third will follow unless he heeds my words. This I have learned from God. If this man wishes to survive and serve God, he will seek me.”

De Colville smiled patiently. “I don’t mean to impugn your relationship with the divine, Madame Akropolites, but you may wish to make sure that your bad dreams are more than the product of spoiled beef before you call upon us again.”

Meloku allowed them to shuffle out. In spite of de Colville’s bravado, his companions looked pale. These men weren’t accustomed to women speaking to them like this, let alone a woman with influence. Regnault looked at her as he went.

Galien only broke his silence when Regnault had closed the door behind him. “There is not a man I know who would have dared speak to cardinals that way,” he said. “Not even other cardinals. Not in public. Whether that was for good or for ill, you are very impressive.”

“And you know how to flatter,” she said.

“If you can pull off whatever you’re attempting, I will remain at your side forever.”

It wouldn’t take long for de Colville’s companions to spread rumors of what she’d said. She’d allow a few days to for that.

De Colville would die publicly, of fast-acting genengineered variants of plague. He attended Mass every morning. The first symptoms of the septicemic plague – fever, the skin discoloration – would begin just as Mass began, when it was too late to politely get up. By the end of the service, his fingers and toes would be hard as coal, and he would be in agony. His luckless friend would find a similar death waiting for him at dinner with Clement that night.

And Cardinal Regnault would be back to see her the morning after, full of holy terror.

These men were so defenseless and predictable that the next few months might as well have been written on a page. Meloku pulled back the curtain sheltering the room from the drafty window. She peered into the palace yard. Queen Joanna was approaching to pay another call on His Holiness, a veil protecting her face from a mist of light rain. She was flanked by six escorts. She seemed calm and composed, but infrared and spectrographics showed the cold sheen on her forehead, the glassy dryness of her eyes. She believed she was on a mission from God. She had met Him, after all.

And so soon would many other monarchs scattered throughout the plane. Ways and Means had begun seeding the courts with their agents. Meloku didn’t need to ask to know they were doing the same thing she was, subverting the natives from their leadership on down. Changing the structure of their society before anyone realized what was happening.

She turned off her enhanced senses as she watched Joanna trudge. She and her companions became distant figures again, cloaked by rain.

Her skin felt like gnats were crawling all over her. No matter how she stood, she couldn’t get comfortable.

Companion mused, “Here I was starting to wonder if you had a conscience.”

“Of course I have a conscience,” she snapped. “I’ve always had a conscience. I want to do what’s best for these people.”

“What’s best for them requires manipulating them in ways that you would never tolerate being done to yourself.”

Meloku shifted, trying to not to show how much Companion’s sudden appearance had bothered her. Futile, of course. Companion was inside her head. “If you or the amalgamates decided that ‘influencing’ me would be best for the Unity, I would go along.” For all she knew, the amalgamates had been altering her all her life.

“But you wouldn’t be happy about it,” Companion said. “And you’re not happy with the way this assignment has been going.”

Meloku released air through her lips. “I’m sorry I’ve been doubting.”

“It’s been like this since your argument with Habidah.”

“I wasn’t able to argue against her to the best of my abilities.”

“And you didn’t like many of the answers that you gave her.”

Again, there was no point in denying it. Meloku stared out the window, not seeing. She said, “If the amalgamates would like to replace me with another agent, I understand.”

“The amalgamates are facing a threat they’ve never encountered and could never have anticipated,” Companion said. “The plague is forcing them to make decisions they never have before. Small, underdeveloped planes like this one must be subordinate to our interests. We can help the natives, ease the transition for them, but in the end they’re going to have to give up control of their world.”

Meloku cast her gaze across Avignon’s streets, from the tall, wide walls designed to impress, to the shuffling fat drunks and ecclesiastics watching prostitutes pass by. “It’s not as though they’ve done a good job managing things themselves so far.”

“The amalgamates would not be as interested in you without your conscience,” Companion said. “Remember that. Your empathy is why the amalgamates need human agents at all, and they forgive you for it.”

“I’ve never been accused of being very empathetic before.” A floating map of Eurasia appeared in the back of Meloku’s mind, color-coded and shaded. She’d spent the past few weeks meticulously mapping the church’s influence. Spain and France, outside Languedoc, were solid colors, but Central Europe, the northern kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire, and especially the Netherlands were patchwork. England alternated between solid and broken depending on which metric she used. And the Italians, though deeply religious, resented papal control more than any other people.

She said, “These people have the means of controlling the continent right here, in this city, but they’re frittering it away year by bloody year. The German kingdoms are just looking for an excuse to challenge Avignon. Florence is on the cusp of riot. And England will discard the papacy as soon as it becomes inconvenient.”

“The wars are foregone conclusions,” Companion said. “We planned for them long ago. They’re not what you’re upset about. Your subconscious keeps returning to Habidah.”

She shook her head. Companion almost, but not quite, understood. Or did it? Sometimes she had trouble understanding what was going through her own mind. “I thought I could convince her.”

“You could change her mind by blunter means. Why do you treat her more gently than Joanna?”

“She’s one of us. She should understand. She doesn’t have any excuse not to.” She watched a procession of clerks march out of the palace and flock, in defiance of pestilence safety laws, toward the nearest tavern. “She and the others have no idea what kind of world they’re actually living in.”

Everything Habidah did, she did to satisfy her ego. To convince herself that she was a good person. She was maintaining contact with that monk. She and he called each other at odd times. Once, he had called her in the middle of the night, when demiorganic telemetry insisted she was asleep. He had kept transmitting at the pace of conversation, as if content that she might be listening.

There was something very odd about that relationship that Meloku meant to plumb further. She meant to eavesdrop but had not yet mustered the will.

Companion said, “Habidah is recovering contact with her remaining teammates. Joao is already at your old field base, and Kacienta is on her way.”

“I thought I locked down their shuttle.”

“Ways and Means unlocked it. It thinks that they may be of use.”

Meloku’s stomach tightened. “Ways and Means doesn’t understand what it would take to get them on our side.”

“Would you like to help Osia persuade them?”

She tried to hide it, but couldn’t stop acid from rising in her throat. She hadn’t realized how much Habidah had affected her. Maybe it was this whole damned world, and everything she was doing to it.

“No,” she said. “They’re less important than anything else I could be doing.”

Companion sensed her mood. It sent a wave of endorphins and warmth to thaw the back of her mind. Meloku pretended to stare at the map. Only when she managed to push her objections below her conscious and subconscious minds – the only levels at which Companion could read her – did she get to work.