![]() ” He gestured vaguely at the tomb as if the inevitability of death was a kind of universal hall pass. Whatever it was, he was pretty sure it had already been practiced and rehearsed. That he was a free man, and rejected the hospitality of the palace. Holden wondered what exactly the escalation tree looked like when he said no. “Will you be going in to the reception, sir?” a guard asked. Empty was apparently the symbol of the honored prisoner. The place where his insignia of rank would have gone was blank. ![]() It scraped the skin along the side of Holden’s neck. ![]() His clothes were of Laconian military cut, blue with the spread wings that Duarte had picked for his imperial icon. With the palace behind him, Holden could almost pretend that he might walk out to the wilderness beyond the palace grounds and go wherever he chose. The breeze was warm enough to be comfortable. The grass around the crypt wasn’t like the stuff back on Earth, but it filled the same ecological niche and behaved similarly enough that they called it grass. That they were, they mostly broke into little clumps with whoever they already knew. People had come from across the empire to be here, and now The hundreds of chairs arrayed around the podium where the priest had spoken were only about half-filled now. It was etched into the stone along with the dates of her birth and death and a few lines of poetry he didn’t recognize. A portrait of Avasarala filled the center panel on the north face of the structure. The great doors were closed now, the service concluded. The mausoleum-her mausoleum, since there wasn’t anyone else of sufficient stature to share it with her yet-was white stone polished micron-smooth. Holden was pretty sure that even though it didn’t make it into the press releases and state newsfeeds, everyone remembered that she and Duarte had been on opposite sides, back in the day. History was in the process of being rewritten by the winners. The part where Duarte was complicit in the vast slaughter on Earth that defined Avasarala’s career got skipped over. A memorial would be built to her so that she would never be forgotten. The funeral would be at the State Building. The high consul of Laconia thought it only right and proper that she find her final resting place at the heart of the new empire. ![]() Avasarala’s time as secretary-general of the United Nations had been a critical period in history, and her service not only to her world but to the whole human project had earned her a place of honor that could never be forgotten. Chrisjen Avasarala was dead.Ī state funeral had been planned on Earth before Duarte intervened. It was almost a month between the moment he heard the news and the first time he let himself accept that it was true. Even when the confirmation came to Laconia that the reports were true, Holden still believed deep in his bones that she was out there somewhere, irritated and profane and pushing herself past all human limits to bend history just another fraction of a degree away from atrocity. It was impossible to imagine a universe that wouldn’t bow to the little old woman’s will. ![]() No matter what they said, they hit Holden just as hard. The chyrons and headlines had been hyperbolic: T he Last Queen of Earth and Death of a Tyrant and Avasarala’s Final Farewell. The newsfeeds all had obituaries and remembrances prerecorded and ready to spin out across the thirteen hundred systems to which humanity was heir. A long, healthy life, a brief illness, and she left humanity very different than she’d found it. She’d passed in her sleep on Luna four months earlier. ![]()
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