Sebastian of Mars (3 page)

“So,” he said, “You have your toy, and I have
mine. You will continue to study the heavens until we next
meet?”

I held up his gift. “Of course! And when you
return –”

He anticipated me. “I will bring your
telescope. And you and I will study Earth and the stars
together!”

“Hurrah!”

Newton laughed, and then grew abruptly
somber. He scratched his chin and sat down heavily on the
stool.

“There is much I worry about, Sebastian,” he
said. “I fear for your safety, and for the future of the world your
mother died to insure. You are so young, and I fear a great burden
will fall on your shoulders before you are ready for it. Perhaps I
shouldn’t say this to one so young, but beware almost everyone
around you.”

“Even Xarr, and Thomas?”

“They are both good men. Xarr I would trust
with my life, and yours, too. But Thomas is young, and picked to do
a young man’s job. And as for the rest . . .” He scratched his chin
again, looking over my head at nothing at all. “I wish that I did
not have to go back to the west, but I must. So let me leave you
with this thought to ponder: No matter what happens, I want you
never to forget that there are things greater than any of us on
Mars. And dreams greater than any of us. My own dreams are what
keep me going. Don’t ever forget yours.”

He cocked an eye at me. “Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good. Now sleep. You look tired. I wish
there was more we could do to improve your strength. You have been
burdened with this weakness of body since birth, and it only adds
to your burdens. But I get the feeling that in other ways, it has
made you strong. As I said before, you are much like your mother.
But she had the advantage of a strong constitution, also. She could
fight like a devil when she had to.”

“You mean like my sister?”

He rolled his eyes. “Amy is a tiger, but I am
afraid she is all claws. She never sits still! If I were to try to
have this talk with her, she would be hanging from the curtains and
shouting a challenge to the world while waving her wooden sword
madly in the air!”

I laughed at this image, which wasn’t far
from the truth.

“Anyway, Sebastian, take care of yourself and
be well. I will return as soon as I can. And this time Thomas does
not have to come with me.”

“It is lonely when the two of you are
gone.”

He tucked me into my bedding and then, to my
surprise, kissed me lightly on the forehead.

“I always thought of your mother as my
daughter,” he whispered, and I detected his sadness. After I lost
my own daughter, I thought Haydn would be with me into my old
age.”

A tear from old Newton’s eye fell onto my
forehead, where he had kissed me, as he straightened.

“Be well – Sire,” he said, still a
whisper.

When he was gone and the door had been closed
and then locked by the guard, I lay for a long while and stared at
the clouded sky, which had begun to clear. I thought of the many
terrible and wonderful things Newton had told me – and then, just
before sleep descended, the clouds parted, letting in the light of
a bright star, Saurus, I’d wager.

And next to it, blue and dim and mysterious,
and with a small white companion, what hadn’t been shown by my toy,
the Blue Lady herself, Earth, floating majestically in the
dark.

T
he next morning I
was awakened by commotion outside my door. As I called for the
guard the door burst open and my sister Amy, along with her friend
Charlotte, rushed into the room laughing. The guard, behind them,
looked in at me sheepishly and closed the door behind them.

“Brother!” Amy shouted, jumping onto my bed.
She wore a bright blue tunic fringed in deep red brocade. The white
fur of her face, with a single patch of amber over one eye, was
stained with whatever she had eaten for breakfast. Her deep gold,
almond-shaped eyes were bright.

She held what looked like a real sword up
high. “Death to traitors!”

With a mad cry she thrust the sword down into
my middle – and to my horror it seemed to pass right through the
bedclothes and into me!

“Amy!” I shouted.

And yet I felt nothing.

She laughed wildly, and pulled the sword
back. The mad gleam was still in her eyes.

“Look! A gift from Newton!”

She pressed the edge of the sword into the
palm of her paw the blade retracted into the handle with a
snick.
As she pulled it away from her paw the blade shot out
again to full length.

“Ha!” She thrust the sword into me again and
again.

“Amy, I really am tired . . .” I
protested.

She jumped to the edge of the bed and then
back up to where I lay. “How can you be tired? You slept all
night!”

Again she thrust the sword into my
bedclothes, in the vicinity of my heart. “Die, traitor, die!”

Wearily, I looked over at Charlotte, who was
staring at me strangely.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, giving her a baleful
look. “After all, you put me here with your trip wire, didn’t
you?”

“I’m sorry!” she said, to my utter amazement,
and then she ran from the room just as Thomas was entering it.

“Amy!” he scolded, picking my sister up from
the bed and putting her on the floor, as she stabbed at him
repeatedly with her toy.

“I will have to talk to Newton about giving
you such things,” Thomas said wearily, pointing her toward the
door, where her Nanny waited. “Now go to lessons, and leave your
brother alone.”

“Hyyyy
ahhhh
!” Amy shouted like a wild
cat, and jumped up on the bed again, driving the toy sword into me
one final time before jumping from the far side and scooting around
Thomas and out into the hallway.

The door closed on the commotion ensuing out
there, and Thomas straightened his tunic and stood before me.

“How’s your leg?” he asked.

“Stiff, but serviceable, I think,” I
answered. As I said this I slipped from the bed and tested it. “Not
too bad.”

“Good. Then walk with me.”

I blinked. “But what about lessons? And my
breakfast?”

“They can wait,” he said mysteriously.
“Follow.”

The door opened again, and I hobbled out
after Thomas, who set, I thought, a deliberately brisk pace.

We stopped, to my thrill, before the doors of
the Council Chamber, which I had only officially broached the day
before.

The doors were opened by two attendants. I
limped in after Thomas.

There was something different about the room,
which I couldn’t quite focus on . . .

Thomas strode to the chair the regent had
presided from the previous day, and stood behind it. “Well?”

“Well what?” I said, but even as the words
left my mouth I realized what was different in the room – the chair
itself was not the one Parum had sat in, but was
the royal
throne
.

“But –”

“There was another meeting last evening,
while Newton entertained you. He had already cast his vote.
Needless to say, it was in favor of your early ascension to the
throne.” He smiled. “There was, naturally, one nay vote.”

“Parum,” I said, as if in a dream. I couldn’t
take my eyes off this huge symbol of power, its deeply polished red
junto wood, the cushion of royal blue, the embroidered symbols of
Martian authority – a round red circle girdled in stars – set into
its back.

“Yes, Parum. Even Rella, who is F’rar, voted
in favor. I’m afraid Parum will try to cause trouble.”

“We will banish him if we have to,” I said. I
had slowly made my way, still limping, to stand before the throne.
I stood staring at it with what must have been a stupid, blank look
on my face. “My mother never sat here.”

“Yes, she did. When she was little, your
grandfather used to let her curl up on it. Xarr told me the story.
The King told her never to get used to its feel beneath her. He had
just declared the First Republic then, and had dreams of dissolving
the throne altogether. It was –”

“I know the history books,” I interrupted,
running my hand over the cushion. “It was what doomed the First
Republic, and sent my mother into exile. It was only by accepting
her role as Queen that she was able to defeat Frane, who had stolen
power in the name of her clan, the F’rar, and establish the Second
Republic.”

“And you now to lead it. The ceremony will be
a week from tomorrow.”

“Very well.”

I wanted very badly to climb up into that
chair, to curl up on its cushion like my mother had when she was a
kit.

But I suddenly knew that my days as a kit
were over, as of that moment.

“Put this throne back into storage,” I said
abruptly. I hardly believed that I was saying it.

Thomas was startled. “Surely you can’t mean
that –”

“Put it away and replace it with a chair just
like all the others. That is what I will sit in.”

“But why?”

I gave him what I hoped was a level stare.
“My mother never would have done anything so ostentatious, and
neither will I. If I must rule, then very well, I will rule, but I
will not sit higher than any other man.”

A slow smile came onto Thomas’ face. “You
really
have
studied the constitution.”

“I know it like I know my own self. It is all
I have of my mother, and she died giving it to me.”

I saw a strange look pass over Thomas’
features, which was quickly banished. He almost spoke but then
gathered himself and nodded. “Very well, Sebastian. I will have it
removed. I think it a wise decision.”

I gave him a smile. “I bet old Parum didn’t
enjoy seeing it, though, did he?”

Thomas threw back his
head and laughed.

T
hat night I drew
from its hiding spot behind my dresser, where even prying Amy
hadn’t been able to find it, my most prized possession. Newton had
given it to me the year before, when, as he said, I was finally old
enough to appreciate it. He could have given it to me when I was a
little kit and I would have appreciated and cherished it, because
it had belonged to my mother.

It was a strange keepsake, a book of the Old
Ones, which made it, of course, immensely valuable. But no price
could be put on this artifact, the only object in existence with a
connection not only to my mother but also my grandmother, who had
been a sad woman, from what I was told.

It was a picture book, of strange-looking Old
One musicians. Many pages were missing, and some were brittle, and
I always took great care when I handled it lest it dissolve to dust
in my hands.

Three pages in particular were special.

The first was a portrait of a tall, thin Old
One with a completely naked face and a high mane of hair on the top
of his head (a feline book had claimed that, in certain Old One
ages, this was not real hair at all but something called a wig!)
standing next to a musical instrument. One of his strange, long
fingered paws rested on its keyboard. The name under the picture
was FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN.

My mother, I had been told, was named after
this Old One by my grandmother, just as my mother named my sister
and me after two other Old One Musicians.

My own picture was partially torn away, but
showed most of a portrait of a rather fat, smiling Old One, also
wearing what looked to be a wig. His name, also partially missing,
was SEBASTIAN BACH. And Amy’s picture was of a proud looking woman
named AMY BEACH.

I carefully studied each picture, and the
relatively hairless creatures the Old One’s had been. So like and
yet so unlike us. There was still so much mystery surrounding their
origin, and also their demise. How did they relate to us? Where had
they gone, millennia ago? One of Newton’s Science Guild colleagues,
who had been studying the Old Ones all his life, estimated that
they had died out nearly two million years ago. Why?

It was one of the questions that had always
intrigued and inspired me.

This was the kind of King I wanted to be: one
who gave his people answers instead of questions, and I resolved
that my reign would, hopefully, begin a golden age of knowledge on
Mars.

I fell asleep with the book on my lap, and
was only roused, hours later, by the sound of a door quietly
opening.

I knew instantly by the stealthy nature of
the sound that it was not Thomas or one of my guards come to check
on me. The lamp next to my bed had been extinguished. Through the
opening crack in the door I saw the guard, his head lolling, asleep
or worse in his chair outside.

And then the light in the hallway went out,
and I could see nothing.

The door opened wider, squeaking slightly on
its hinges. Holding my breath, I angled myself out of the bed,
leaving the book behind.

The door closed behind a figure now inside
the room.

I could feel the presence of the other. There
was a heat, a slightly sweet odor, a slight breathing that
announced the intruder.

Was this how my reign would end, before it
had even begun, at the hands of an assassin?

The other stood silent, and now I could make
out a slight shape in the darkness as my eyes became used to the
dark.

The shape moved to the bed, to the lamp next
to it, and stood still. It was hovering over the bed, its hand
moving over the wall to the switch.

I stepped back, my hands out to shield me, as
the lamplight turned night into sudden day.

“
Charlotte!
” I cried.

She froze, staring at the empty bed and the
book on it, then at me. “Sebastian!” There was confusion and fright
on her face.

I began to breathe again, but her look of
fear didn’t dissipate.

“Did my sister put you up to this, to scare
me?”

“No. I –”

She looked vulnerable, something I had never
seen this boisterous companion of my sister’s – wild, mischievous,
pretty in a tomboyish way with huge brown-gold eyes and light
silver fur – look. In recent weeks she had begun to look older,
less kitish. “I had to speak to you, Sebastian,” she said.