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and will be revealed there. You come from the same time and space as this mad
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Empress, do you not?"
"Yes, my Lord Baron. What Josich attempts here is the same as what he
attempted back in the confederation called the Realm. He was a male then, an
Emperor, self-appointed and self-proclaimed."
"And this consortium defeated Josich?"
"In a sense, my Lord Baron. It stopped him. It did not, however, catch him. He
remained in a hidden empire of criminal organizations for a very long time,
and he came here because, after more than a century, they finally did catch
him, but at a point where the way here was opened."
"And you are here, sacrificing your race, your future, everything you had, to
continue to pursue him?"
Yeah, sure.
"We are dedicated to such a goal, my Lord Baron!"
It wasn't clear if the Baron believed that or not. Still he said, "I want you
to come with me to Castle
Oriamin. It has been suggested that you may be of great value in the coming
fight. I am leading a delegation to this conference and I need to know much
more before I go."
"I would be honored, my Lord Baron, but is it not true that even your servants
are of royal blood? Pardon, but I beg your understanding of my worries about
such a situation. I fear that if I were to stay there, I
would spend so much time bowing and addressing everyone as superior to the
point where I would be less than nothing."
The Baron seemed genuinely amused by the response, which covered an area that
had never occurred to him. "Well, then, we'll have to give you some kind of
status. I cannot, of course, give you blood royal, since only birth can do
that, but I can confer the status of concubine, which will give you status as
a member of the household. We can have someone teach you the basics of being a
courtesan. That way we will have you as a resource."
"I uh . . ." Tann Nakitt didn't know what to say. It was everything she'd been
trying to connive and more all rolled into one, and it had simply walked up
and knocked!
The Baron mistook the hesitancy. "Please consider it. We need you, and, as I
say, many in positions far beyond Ochoa believe you should be included in
this. We will see to it that your friends here are well taken care of, if that
is a consideration."
Through the desire, through the sexual turn-on, through the shock at suddenly
being "in," Tann Nakitt's
basic nature, as they always warned about such types, came to the fore. "I
shall be honored, my Lord
Baron, if my friends are looked after and if my personal honor is satisfied as
you suggest. I am always and forever at the command of my adopted nation."
This type always loved to be stroked, she thought. She could see in his manner
that he was pleased by this response.
"I have a busy schedule. Can you say your farewells and leave with me this
day?" he asked her. "I should like to get you settled in before I need to go
to a local conference with the military district."
Tann Nakitt sighed. "Well, I would have loved to have said farewell to Haqua,
who is a fisher today, and I
am cer-tain that she will be devastated at having missed your visit. Still,
dear Czua, you will convey my deep affection to her when she returns, won't
you?"
Czua managed a puzzled look in her direction, and she knew it might have been
a little thick. In fact, the look was a lot more like, I'm envious, you
bastard! I hope you smother on his first embrace!
Oh, well.
"Just let me gather together my few possessions and I am yours to command, my
Lord Baron," she said with as much humility as she could muster.
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Hell, wasn't this how Josich had started out under similar circumstances?
Look out, Well World! Tann Nakitt's back in the game!
Well, not exactly back in her game.
Ochoans lived in the cliffs and hillsides and had made small cities out of
buttes and mesas, but the nobles lived far better, higher up, of course, than
the common cliff cities, and in massive castles hewn out of solid rock. As
with the cities and towns below, there were no roads to these places, no ropes
and pulleys and cables. When your population could fly, these weren't
necessary to get in and out, and when supplies were required, they could be
brought in by strong flying teams or hoisted on steam-driven platforms that
could also be quickly disassembled.
The grand, polished face of Castle Oriamin showed a dwelling of perhaps seven
stories more than a kilometer in the air, as often as not above rather than
below the clouds that formed as the winds blew over the warm ocean and were
lifted up to climb the mountains. The castle was also hundreds of meters long,
and clearly was the home to a great many people. There was no fetch and carry
for water here, either;
running water from the frequent rains and mists came right through the place,
then exited as a series of smaller waterfalls. In between they were diverted
to foun-tains for drinking, baths for bathing, and a system of cisterns that
allowed wastes from the population to be carried out the bottom and drop with
the spent water into the ocean far below.
Even Tann Nakitt was impressed. Now this was more like it!
The Baron had already gone to his next appointment; she was following Madama
Kzu a Oriamin, one of the Baron's very distant cousins and a part of his
entourage, up and into the place.
It was only when you got very close to the face of the fortress that you saw
the guns. Sleek, streamlined, the gun-powder cannon refined to the nth degree
for safety, range, and efficiency, these bristled from gun mounts and ports.
They looked too polished, though, to be imminently prac-tical; if there was
any drill and test firings, none had heard of it.
Still, if they did work, siege would be the only practical way to attack the
place short of flying soldiers carrying rockets. Those flyers would face
air-cooled machine-gun fire that would make accuracy a real problem, too,
Nakitt thought, spotting the smaller weapons. Below was a broad bay that was
quite deep and wouldn't provide the best anchorage for floating gun platforms.
They would, however, make nice tar-gets for castle guns, which looked to have
the range of the bay, and had gravity on their side.
Food would be the only problem, and even that might be more a hardship than a
fatality. The snows of the peak almost certainly were used year round for cold
storage, and the clouds and mist would mask those going up to get them, or
even to supplement them.
Whoever had designed the system, long ago, had some real skill in defensive
fortifications. Each major bay or harbor had a similar fortification, although
not necessarily so large or so grand, and, perched on the battlements, you
could just barely see the next one on a distant island in each direction.
Semaphore and lantern could give communica-tions even in the worst of
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