[b]Addis Ababa[/b]

The people had melted back into the city and traffic returned to the parade route. Only trash remained, littering the roads with torn streamers and soiled banners. Night had came to the African capital, but celebration still rung across the grounds of the Palatial residence of the Imperial Family. It's ground floor was packed with mingling bodies - some wearing sharp western suits or dresses trimmed to the body, while others wore the lose fitting and colorful robes of Africa. They were the important - politicians, businessmen, celebrities, and military heroes, and the Imperial treasury had spared no expense for their comfort. The several hired bars that dotted the grounds sent white-clad servants through the crowd with free liquor of all sorts. Wine, champagne, whiskey and rum... there was Ethiopian honey wine, and palm wine from the jungles in the west. Harbin Beer and dry rice wine represented the fruits of Asian trade. And when drink wasn't enough, tiny bags of white powder and acid tabs the size of fingernails were traded under tables. In the clamor, it was hard to tell who was drunk from who had taken more, and nobody cared.

Taytu stood on the mezzanine looking out a thick two-story tall window, one hand placed gently on the marble sill and another holding a half-empty glass of white wine. Outside, she could see the gardens - the party had poured across the porch and into the yard. Drunk women led young war heroes and aging aristocrats into the expansive mazes, gnawing at each others lips on fountain rims, or going further into the dark mix of hedges to enjoy each others company in other ways. But Taytu stood alone, her cream and gold dress feeling as cold as the blanket of an empty bed against her skin. It all reminded her of her youth in Austria where here father had sent her to study. She had been the only African, and the chill of the European Alps had been foreign to her. The elderly barons and graf's had looked at her with suspicion. A savage from a savage land - taller than most of the Germans and too swarthy to be a lady - that was what they had saw in her. The great grand daughter of a tribal mountain king who had the gall to humiliate white colonial forces at Adwa when they had been children. They had been as cold as the mountains that their castles mounted, but their children and grand children had been different. Perhaps the Austrian youth had felt the same chill, because they had rebelled against it in their way. In ski-houses and hostels, she had learned as much about socialism and liberalism as she had about alcohol and sex. 

But that was then. A distant past that had shaped her, but something she had left behind for the responsibility of her family, her dynasty, her country, and her brother. War had torn Sahle from them, it had torn happiness from Yaqob, and it had tore at the Africa their father had built more than once. Some times, it felt like she was the only one who could pick up the pieces.

Beyond the gardens, beyond the drinking and the fucking, there was Addis Ababa. The city did not have the grace of Vienna, nor the wealth of Madrid or the size of Beijing. It was an unorganized spread of modernity and poverty. Towers of glass and steel poked out from behind the trees - stunted compared to what the western or eastern capitals boasted, but proud in their own way. Behind them, the dim outline of mountains stood over the city. Moonlight made them purple and obscure, but during the day they were brown and scrubby. Sahle had disappeared behind them, across the highlands and near a small lake. [i]Where is he now? Did he make it to where he wanted to go?[/i] No. He had wanted to be here, on the throne. And he was probably dead. 

She could barely remember him now. All the images they had now were of him once he had came to the throne. She was older than he had been the - he had been near thirty at coronation - but he always looked like a kid in a crown. It was the grin. He had always grinned, as if he was able to see under everyone's clothes. [i]Knowing my older brother, he probably was imagining just that.[/i]

The crash of glass shattering against the ground woke her from a trance. A broken glass. There would be apologies and a broom, and then everyone would forget about it.

"Princess." a voice greeted behind her, calmer that any voice in the building. She turned and put on a politic smile.

It was Mvulu. The Captain of the Emperor's guard, he had succeeded Yaqob's own wife. He was a broad-shouldered man with skin the dark chocolate color of Central Africa, which contrasted with his cream-white uniform to make him look darker still. His face was scarred, as was his arms, but the worse scars were told by what he did not have. A patch of gold and white covered his left eye, and his right leg was replaced by ivory below the knee. The ivory was carved with a gold-leaf inlaid scene depicting a troop of gorillas standing proudly in a storybook jungle. It wrapped a round the entire peg, and distracted from the ugly truth behind how he had lost it. "A gorilla took the leg." he would say when asked, "And a white man took the eye." There was a story behind it all - a story built around the bloody rebellion that had ripped Katanga apart four years earlier. Mvulu had led a small group of survivors from Lubumbashi in the south and back into loyal Imperial territory - receiving his wounds as he went. His men had cut a swath through enemy territory, and he had won medals and an office as a result.

"They are asking for you down there." he said politely.

Taytu sucked air. She enjoyed parties from time to time, but the skirmish with the Turks had left her shaken. "Will you escort with me, Captain?" she asked. 

Mvulu nodded, and they went. The decent down the staircase was like climbing into a kennel - the dogs barking at each other and her. [i]That is awful,[/i] she realized, [i]These people have done the world for us.[/i] Why did she feel so tired of them?

A raucous laugh cut through the noise and caused her to look. Ras Hassan stood as solid as a wall - a crystal glass of brown liquor in one hand and men surrounded him like geese looking for bread. He was a big boned man with a gut that protruded over his belt. Taytu remembered him from her youth - the lean officer who spoke very little and whose star only rose on account of her father. Yohannes has seen the man different. He had seen the competence, and the willingness to do whatever had to be done. But he had not seen the arrogance. He did not live to hear of bloody infant arms piled behind a dirty camp. He did not live to see the man turn Yaqob into an puppet-Emperor. [i]I bet he raped Azima's mom, too.[/i] It would make the most sense. There was no love in the man, nor no sentimentality. She didn't know what drove him, and that bothered her more that anything.

"Advisor Taytu... your imperial highness." another voice called out. A familiar voice. [i]Can I get away from his lackeys? Why are they everywhere?[/i]

Hakim Mossadeq was the Director of the Walinzi - the Ethiopian intelligence agency that had grown out of the more domestic Home Guard of her father and grandfather. He had an Arabic look to him, with a square jaw and a shaven face stained dark by the roots of his facial hair. His hair was crisp and slicked by with grease, and his black uniform was even sharper. "You were in Port Fuad, were you not?"

[i]He is the damn Director of Intelligence. Of course he knows this.[/i] "I try not to think about it..." she said. 

Mossadeq took a sip, as calm as the night. "We picked up some communications between Egypt and Spain... nothing telling, but surely interesting. The Turkish Governor in Cairo is scrambling for anything he can find, and he has been pretty open about what information he has. Apparently he sent Spain a query about a high-level political prisoner they took from Port Fuad at the same time you were there."

"They?" she asked. 

"Spain." Mossadeq said. "They haven't sent any replies. They probably won't."

It all came rushing back. She had that image her brother always described, of Sotelo wringing his hands and plotting their destruction. [i]Preposterous. He is just another suit. It is the businessmen in charge of that operation.[/i]

But it came back to her all the same. The fear as they told her she was under arrest and locked the doors. The prison-like feeling of that barren cement room. The sound of battleships roaring through the water as they left the Mediterranean for the Red Sea. And the man who had saved her...

[I]Oh god. It was him. They captured them all.[/i]

He had been a kind man - though even Hassan would have seemed kind if it was him who helped her from that window and led her out of the port. She remembered him for his rages, and his bushy beard and slurred style of speaking. [i]But he was black. And not a political prisoner. His companions had not looked better, though there had been one she hadn't seen. [i]I knew there was something there. I had felt it.[/i]

"There was one man..." She began, describing the people she had seen. "That is interesting." Mossadeq stroked his chin as if it were a beard. "But I doubt it. They sound like bums. These Egyptians seem to think there were other criminals involved."

[I]What on earth was I a part of?[/i] She thought.

"I wish I could have been a fly on those sinister walls." another voice chimed in. It was the first time Taytu had noticed him. His clothes looked like something from a different century - his jacket was long, and dark, and it had a tail. He was a dark skinned man with West-African features. He wore a bow-tie instead of the normal type, and his dress shirt was sewn from smooth silk. Though he looked healthy, he leaned casually on an ebony cane with a polished gold handle, and he wore a closely trimmed beard. Despite all of that, his hair was thick and disheveled like some wild woolen shrub.

[i]Dr. Sisi[/i], She knew at once.

Doctor Babukar Sisi was Hassan's pet. [i]Or is Hassan Sisi's?[/i] He was a psychiatrist from the Kinshasa, where he headed a surprisingly successful practice. But everyone knew where he had truly found his power. When Hassan's men had taken to the countryside to fight to overthrow Sahle and put Yaqob in his place, Sisi built him a supply network out of smugglers and pro-Imperials. And when the war was over, Hassan returned the favor with resources. Sisi had more pull in the Walinzi then many cared to admit, and he exercised it through classified contract work and advisory roles. Few knew what those meant, but there were many rumors. He was said to have wrote the book on torture for Walinzi interrogators. And then there were colder stories. When a crazed German emerged from the Congolese jungle a year before with a thick scar denting his head, some whispered that he had somehow been a victim of Sisi's science. [i]That man had lived on his own for years. It is no wonder he was crazy.[/i] Looking into Sisi's cold, disinterested eyes gave her a creepy feeling, and his presence made her question what actually surrounded this man.

"I do not aspire to obtrude." he added politely. His voice reminded her of those Barons and Grafs that had looked down on her in the Austrian Alps. "But the realities of that scenario is... well, it engrosses me Leult... Taytu is it? Or Taytu Yohannes? I have been corrected on this point of title in the past, and I do not mean to bring offense upon your house."

"Taytu Yohannes. My brother would just be Yaqob. Or Yaqob the Second, rather." She said. Many Emperors had taken new, regal names upon their accent, but that tradition had died with their grandfather. [i]That man hated traditions.[/i] Emperor Iyasu V had broken many, stripping the church of their Imperial connections and bringing foreigners in to fill the gaps left by the nobles who had opposed him. Yohannes had kept his first name, and Yaqob has continued the new style, but it was considered peculiar to add the fathers name to the name of an Emperor. 

"That's most correct." Sisi said, "I forget your ways. They tack the name of the father instead of using a surname in this part of the continent. I am sure it is rather confusing to the remainder of all peoples, but each has their own methodology to be sure. I do prefer the European method of using noble houses."

"Is there any house nobler then the ancestors of Sulayman?" Mossadeq added.

"The House of Solomon." Sisi mused. "That is more prestigious than those in Europe, I confess. What that the ancestors of Augustus were still enthroned..."

Sisi and Mossadeq forgot about her, and she was grateful. [i]Finally[/i], she thought. [i]I should find Yaqob[/i]

The ground floor was expansive, orbiting a silver fountain topped with slate-black babies spitting water. They had looked lovely in her youth growing up in this place, but now they looked like they were puking. Her thoughts turned to Olivier, the maimed infant she had saved from the concentration camps in Katanga. [i]A gift from Hassan, the murdering bastard.[/i] His arm was missing, but he had grown up with the wound to the point that it didn't seem to bother him. 

The fountain was not the only thing to stick out in the crown. Yaqob had turned the Imperial Palace into his own personal museum. A hulking map of African hung on the wall above the part. It was carved from thick stone, and it looked heavier then the wall that supported it. Very few people lingered on the floor directly below it. [i]They are afraid they will be crushed.[/i]

Statues from Egypt and China towered above the crowd. Paintings hung from the wall, as did masks and swords and a number of other specimens, so thick that they blocked out most of the wall. [i]Most of it belongs in a museum.[/i] It was a peculiar obsession for her brother to have. 

She found him near the center of the madness, holding court amongst a few select people under the watchful eye of four Imperial guardsmen. [i]He fears assassination. He fears crowds[/i]. The Spanish had seen to that. Though they never knew where the order came from in their hierarchy, it had certainly came from Spain. They had purchased killed from their own prisons and sent them half a world away to kill the Emperor. Their father had died from an assassins bullet, and her brother had nearly followed him. The wound punctured his lung, and the following infection kept it from ever healing right. He bore a scar on his breast now - a tangle of reddened tentacles reaching out from a crater of scar tissue. It made it hard for him to breath, and she knew it still hurt him more than he showed. 

"Sister." He said in his sad, warm voice. "Mvulu told me you were lingering outside of the party."

She smiled. "Has your guard became your spies as well? I'm not in the mood for this party right now."

He paused for a moment. She saw empathy in his eyes. "You have not slept well."

"Did Mvulu tell you that?" She replied with a half-baked grin, but it faded when he didn't return it. "I thought I was going to die."

"The Turks wouldn't have killed you." Yaqob assured. "That would have been extreme, even for them. Even for the Sultan. Suleiman was mad, but he did have sane people around him."

"You think the sane ones would have stopped him from abducting me." she mumbled. "Or stopped that stupid war. Now look what they have."

Yaqob nodded. "There is somebody you need to meet. Follow me."

They walked through several rooms, passing through crowds of people dressed bother colorfully and dully. The walls were white panel festooned in gold, and Yaqob's collection covered all of them. She saw a North American Native head-dress, its white feathers tipped in black and stained faintly tan from years of dust. A bronze shield hung from the wall across the room, chipping paint drawing a monstrous grinning face across the surface. Even a nearby end table held a small mummified cat held up by a copper prop next to the phone. [i]If they put a candle there, it would burst into flames. How awful.[/i]

They entered another room, this one paneled with stained acacia. Taytu paid no attention to the decorations. Her eyes were on the people.

There were very few in this room, and all of them were dressed in black. When they saw Yaqob enter the room, the fell into a stiff salute, but he quickly waved them off. "Is Leyla here?" he asked. When his eyes caught sight of her, he nodded. "Come here, agent. I need you to speak."

Leyla was young for the Walinzi. Her face was youthful enough to be mistaken for a child, but her body was not. Her uniform did nothing to hide her full breasts, or the shape of her hips. "Agent Leyla..." Taytu greeted the young girl, pausing on her name.

"Leyla Masri." the agent replied. [i]Even her voice is young. Did they get this one from a primary school?[/i] Taytu noticed the medals decorating her chest. "You were active in the war?"

"Armenia, your Imperial highness." 

Armenia. That was where the Ottoman Empire truly fell, and the Walinzi there had helped in the pushing. 

"Now agent Leyla, my sister is a secured source. Tell her the story, like you told me." Yaqob said.

Leyla hesitated. [i]Is she afraid or embarrassed?[/i] Taytu wondered. "Don't be worried, young agent. I am comfortable with whatever you have to say. [i]A lie.[/i]

And Leyla told. She told how she had joined the Sultan's household as a servant. She told how the Sultan was ill and suffered from a heart condition. "He was grey, your Imperial Highness." she explained. "And he needed help walking wherever he went. I sometimes helped him, and he grew close to me. I think he grew close to all of the girls in his service."

[i]I see where this is going.[/i]

"So that is how I did it. I didn't need poison, or a knife or a gun or anything. I just replaced his heart medication with this a medicine the rebels in Istanbul gave me. It was made of natural chemicals and made his heart work faster without being detectable. I gave that to him and I... well, I was close to him so I..." she shied at this point, looking down at the ground. Yaqob touched her on the shoulder. "What you did was for your country" he assured. 

"It worked." she said. "He couldn't take it and his heart burst. I saw the look in his eyes. They drained... and he was gone."

[i]At this rate, all the world governments will assassinate each other. What a way to reach peace.[/i] "You did good." Taytu assured. "It was unorthodox, but it was... clean."

They left the young agent and returned to the party. Servants began to move through the crowd carrying trays of skewered fruit, and the guests plucked them as happily as they had the drinks. "It smells like alcohol in here, Sister." Yaqob muttered. "Part of me thinks... wouldn't this be the right time to hurt us? Right here in this room, while everyone is too drunk to answer?"

Taytu smiled nervously. "Your guards are sober."

"So they are." Yaqob drifted, "So they are..."

Azima joined them, discussing gossip she had heard from some undersecretary to the Chinese ambassador. "He told me Chairman Hou was retiring." she said. "And that he is going to become a farmer."

Yaqob guffawed. "No." he said. "Hou spent his time in offices and staff cars. I can't see him retiring to work the soil and cake dirt beneath his nails."

"Then again..." Taytu mused, "You said that when it was said he was retiring."

"That is still hard to believe." Yaqob admitted.

A sharp crash quieted the night immediatly. Yaqob ducked to the ground if by instinct, but his wife took off dashing up the stairs. It was dead silent for a moment, until a guard called out. "It is okay! But the Emperor should come up stairs!" Taytu looked at her brother, and she could see the wheels moving behind his eyes. [i]He is considering whether or not this is a trap.[/i] It was only when his wife called out confirming the same message that Yaqob went upstairs. Taytu followed.

On the second story, far away from the crowds, the two Imperial toddlers had broke the silence. Tewodros, a young boy barely out of infancy and hardly capable of walking, had ended up on one of the many carved wooden pedestals. He stood there as innocent as the baby that he was, looking on at the crowd that had gathered behind the Emperor as if they were just passing through. Below him, Taytu's toddler stood calmly, his one arm pressed against his chest and broken porcelain all around him. [i]A vase? Half of this stuff is forgettable[/i]

"Tewodros!" Azima cried out. She scooped the child and shoved an angry finger in his face. "Don't destroy things! How did you even get up there."

"Don't be too hard on the child, Zima." Taytu said. His voice was tired, she could hear. [i]But they can all still mistake that for caring. They know little enough that they have their own idea on what their Emperor is like.[/i]

Taytu grabbed Olivier in turn, but she found it hard to be angry at him. [i]He looks at me like he is wiser somehow.[/i] That made her uncomfortable, and his arm made her pity him too much. She held him and stayed quiet. 

"Let me put them to bed." an elderly voice piped up. Their mother swept in, an aging wraith with sagging skin and pure white hair. [i]And she isn't even sixty.[/i] She was dressed in simple black robes, and her eyes looked on into the distance even as she got close. Taytu handed her Oliver. She had taken care of the kids for years, after all, and she treated them more warmly than any nursemaid would.

Several maids joined the elderly Elani, helping Azima to hand Tewodros to her. She was frail, but not frail for the children, and she carried them as lightly as she would carry clothe. Walking back into the long halls of the Imperial Residence, Elani kissed Tewodros on the head.

"Now Sahle, you be good or I will have to tell your father."