by C. L. Polk
“The person processing your application request forwarded it to the King by way of the Chancellor. My under-typist, turning over an efficient new leaf, had it taken to the King this very morning. And now the King is—well, he’s wondering why you didn’t present it to his contest.”
“I think the word you used on the way was ‘perturbed,’” Miles said.
“He wants you to come and submit your invention to the contest,” Grace said. “But I don’t understand why you didn’t do that to begin with.”
Zelind’s fork hovered over kher plate. “Are you familiar with the contest’s rules?”
Grace, having just stuffed the last bite of salmon into her mouth, shook her head. “I didn’t write them. What do the rules grab at?”
“Just entering forfeits your rights of invention to the Crown.”
Grace coughed. “That’s—oh! That greedy, conniving—I should have monitored that more closely. I need duplicates of me to stay on top of palace intrigue.”
“Wait. Go back to the part that’s about me,” Zelind said. “The King wants to see me?”
“Yes.”
“Because I didn’t give away my invention to him.”
Grace nodded. “I don’t know what Severin was thinking with those rules.”
“I do,” I said. It made my shoulders tight. “He wanted a method that would keep Aeland Power and Lights in operation. That monopoly is worth millions.”
Grace nodded. “Now that you point it out, yes. That’s exactly what he was thinking.”
“Is he expecting to see me today?”
“This very afternoon.”
Zelind glanced my way. “Will you come with me?”
“Of course I will. Orlena?”
Orlena touched a napkin to her lips before speaking. “The sled’s going to be crammed.”
“We’ll sit in front with George,” Miles said. “Or we’ll hire a sled to get back.”
“I need to talk to you and Tristan first,” I said.
“Oh? What about?”
“I want you to discreetly try and find someone for me.”
“Oh, a mystery!” Tristan said, half rising from his seat to grab the platter of fish. “I’ll do it. I’m deadly bored. Want to come, love?”
“I still think you could open your own investigation firm,” Miles said. “But I’m not going to let you have all the fun.”
“Who do you want me to find?”
I glanced up and down the table. “I can’t say at the moment.”
“Very well. Later, then.”
We finished our lunches, and while Zelind and Grace helped with the task of washing dishes, I led Tristan and Miles to the tiny back parlor, setting Joy at the door to tattle on anyone who tried to eavesdrop. Tristan leaned against the door, securing it.
“Who do you want us to find?”
“We had the chance to do a little investigating,” I said. “We found the place where the assassin probably took her shot—”
“Her,” Miles said.
“A guess based on the shoe marks we found in the snow. There aren’t a lot of places to learn long-distance shooting—”
“You’re thinking army records?” Miles asked. “But you could—”
“I could,” I said. “But if she’s vigilant, and she notices I’m on her trail—”
“You’re right. You can’t get anywhere near this,” Miles said. “We’ll have a look. There are more women snipers than you might expect—I met one in Laneer. It wasn’t common, but we’ll have a number of women to check out.”
I nodded. “Thank you. Did Grace tell you the police tried to pin it on me?”
“Yes,” Miles said. “I suppose they don’t want you poking around their investigation.”
“That’s the other thing. The police never went to the building in question. They never saw the site.”
“Hmm.” Tristan scratched at his chin. “That’s interesting.”
“Isn’t it?” Miles asked. “I will stop in at Records and have a poke around for lady sharpshooters. I’ll know something in a few days, I’m sure.”
Tristan gasped as Joy slid through the door, hovering half in his body.
“Sorry,” Joy said, even though he couldn’t hear her, and she passed all the way through. Tristan shivered. Joy gave him an apologetic look before turning back to me. “They chased Grace out of the kitchen. That girl never got hot water on her hands for anything, but at least she tried.”
“We’d better get going, then,” I said. “We can’t keep the King waiting.”
* * *
Grace couldn’t stay with the three of us, but she did walk us up to the tall double doors leading into a room that could have been called a parlor if it wasn’t so large. We three perched on the edge of a plush green velvet sofa nested in the middle of the room, its curving, asymmetrical shape the height of modernity.
A maid in black and white wheeled in a tea cart and poured out three cups of floral-scented tea, perfectly brewed to a deep burgundy brown, over delicately molded sugar snowflakes. Fresh unskimmed milk clouded and lightened every cup, and we balanced cup and saucer on our knees, every cup joined by a lacy, crisp, ginger-spiced tea cookie, the efforts of a dedicated pastry chef.
Red-uniformed guards stood at stations around the room, guarding every door and window in the place. All were armed. All were women. I tried smiling at one near the window, but she stared right through me.
I took a nibble of the cookie, rich with butter and sugared ginger. Nothing but the best for the palace—and it would be a shame to leave a drop of this tea behind when the King called us into his office. I stole another glance at the two women dressed in the scarlet, ivory, and gold of the Kingsguard who stood on either side of that door. They stared straight ahead, expressionless.
This long room was simultaneously spare and opulent. Cool winter light poured in from tall windows that offered a view of a snowed-over garden. Snow sculptures of the mourning wives of the first Aelish rebels clustered in the center of the oval lawn. They huddled together, weeping, keening, screaming as the Edaran Empire executed their husbands, their sunlit faces awash with grief. Only one woman stood upright, gazing at the horror of the example the Edarans made of their men and warriors—Agnes, whose clenched fist depicted her resolve to pick up her husband’s sword and fight on.
What did King Severin see when he looked out the window? Did he dwell on the anguish of the women, or the stony determination of Aeland’s founder? I sipped my tea, dwelled in the round fullness of the brew, bit a petal off my cookie, and wondered.
Beside me, Zelind’s knee jogged with nervousness. Khe tugged at kher shirt collar and tugged the hem of kher kilt over kher knees, stilling for a moment—but the bounce came back as khe leaned toward Orlena.
“Can he order me to give over the turbine?”
“Technically, yes,” Orlena said. “But it’s more likely that he will ask.”
“Can I say no? I can’t, can I?”
“You can.” Orlena looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “You can negotiate. That’s what we’re doing here. We’re negotiating.”
Zelind blew out a long breath. “All right. So he can take it from me, but you don’t think he will?”
Orlena glanced at the pair of guards before leaning over to answer in low tones. “Technically the monarch is absolute ruler of Aeland, but no monarch has stepped past the structure of constitutional law since King Philip signed it into being. He will ask. We will negotiate. Eat your cookie.”
“I can’t.”
“Give it to Robin, then. She’s already eaten hers.”
I had. Zelind handed khers over and I took a bite, sipping my half-full cup of tea. I hadn’t expected to drink so much of it.
I took another sip. Another bite. And another, until all the tea was gone and the cookie was little more than a few crumbs on the lip of the saucer. I set the dishes on the knee-high table in front of me and waited.
Three empty cups sat on the ta
ble. The sun tracked three hand-sized panes across the windows, twisting the soft blue shadows on the snow. Orlena had caught Zelind’s fidgeting. She tapped each of her fingers against her thumbs in complicated guitar exercises. I reached out for any ghosts wandering around the palace, and one came, flowing through the wall to look at me.
“What is the King doing in that room?”
I barely let my lips move, my voice nearly inaudible. The ghost, a clerk with the stiff, broad lace collar of his station, drifted toward the office door.
The guards stiffened. They tracked the ghost’s progress, and when the apparition was in reach, one dipped into a pocket and flung a pinch of salt at the ghost.
The spirit flinched and discorporated, banished to the location he had been most attached to in life. I blinked. None of the guards had repelled spirits with salt when I had been coming here to visit Miles as he recovered. Something had changed in that time.
Neither of the guards looked our way, but disapproval hung in the air. I refused to avert my gaze or look anything but innocently surprised. Orlena gave it away, though, by the way she gaped at me, and I would have kicked her ankle if Zelind hadn’t been in the way.
At last, the office door opened. The King had a previous appointment, and that person was finally leaving—
I gaped at the man leaving the King’s office. A tall man with white hair carefully styled in rich waves. His once perfectly tailored suit hung off bony shoulders, and the collar of his white shirt gaped around his wattled neck, but that tie—
Orange silk, exactly the color of Grace Hensley’s sled. The long elegant nose, the curving lower lip—I knew those features. They were a harsher, colder version of Miles’s own perpetually thoughtful expression. Miles’s hair curled in exactly that way. I knew this man, though I had only seen him in newspaper photographs.
The traitor Christopher Hensley didn’t even acknowledge our presence. He could barely put one foot in front of the other, but he walked unassisted by the guard who flanked him. Was she his jailer or his bodyguard? She could have been either. Both.
The man responsible for the asylum system that leeched the dead for aether took another step, then bent over his cane as his ribs rattled with a deep, terrible cough. I recognized it as the body’s desperate urge to rid itself of blockage in the lungs. Sir Christopher Hensley was in the last stages of cancer. He would die of it, and probably soon.
But he should be coughing his lungs out in the Tower of Sighs. He should be behind bars, living his final days in a cell. He should be paying for the things he had done, not walking freely about the palace after a nice chat with the King.
How could Severin condone this? How could he choose this man, of all people, to advise him—how could he unlock the traitor’s cell and let him out?
This was the man who had devised the contest to bring aether back—and had greedily tried to seize someone else’s innovation for the Crown’s profits.
I wanted to get to my feet and walk out. I wanted to refuse to speak to the King. But I followed Orlena and Zelind as they rose and moved to the office door, now summoned to attend King Severin.
I followed into a room full of books—and I cocked my head, because these weren’t the identical spines of law books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, or authorized histories. I squinted at yellow linen spines of an underground press I knew in passing—a press whose books were banned the moment they were published. This was a library of forbidden publications, and probably one of the biggest collections of books on witchcraft I had ever seen.
“Thank you for waiting,” King Severin said, as if we could have left. “I am surprised to see so many of you attending me.”
“Thank you for the invitation, Your Majesty,” Zelind said, remembering the etiquette lessons of our school days. “Orlena Thorpe is my advocate. She’s a contract law specialist. Robin Thorpe is—”
“Here out of concern for her community,” Severin guessed.
“My spouse,” Zelind said. “And one of my business partners.”
Zelind had never mentioned that before. “I suppose we should explain why we decided that submitting to the contest wasn’t the wisest choice,” I said.
“My client has no wish to surrender kher intellectual property rights to this invention, Your Majesty,” Orlena said. “But according to the full contest rules as outlined on the application, Zelind would be forfeiting those rights in order to enter.”
“The prize is a fortune,” Severin said. “It’s enough to live on for the rest of your life.”
“And the income from the national aether network reaped millions of marks for its shareholders,” I said. “We have no interest in reviving that system, and so we’re pursuing other means of manufacture and distribution.”
“You have no funding and no infrastructure,” the King said. “The Crown already has a system in place. It would be wasteful to duplicate the same system for private profit.”
“I’m sorry, Sire,” Zelind said. “While my invention certainly could be used in a national network, there’s no reason to restrict distribution in such a way.”
“I offer you five hundred thousand marks,” King Severin said. “Induction into the Order of Aeland, and the Medal of National Service.”
Zelind pressed kher lips together and glanced at me. Not at Orlena, who could offer sound legal advice. Me.
Five hundred thousand marks? It was more than a fortune. It was riches. But the ease with which the King doubled the figure—it was too much, on the one hand, and not enough on the other. The King wanted it badly.
I met Zelind’s eyes, and slowly shook my head. Khe nodded and turned back to King Severin.
“It’s a generous offer,” Zelind said.
“You don’t have the means to spread your invention across the country. For the sake of Aeland, you must say yes.”
“I’d like to take the time to think about it,” Zelind said. “I understand that your offer is very generous, but there are other matters to consider. As an inventor, it’s not enough to simply make things. I have to consider how the device will change the daily life of every citizen, and I want to be sure the people of Aeland don’t suffer because of my machine. I will consider your offer, but I want to understand it.”
“There could be another applicant, and then you could lose the prize money,” Severin said. “I mean it. This is a race, not a popularity contest. We need to bring aether back to Aeland, and we must do it as quickly as possible.”
“I understand,” Zelind said. “Thank you for the meeting. I’m grateful for your offer. But I must take some time to think about it.”
“You will retain the rights of invention,” Severin said. “The Crown will pay you an annual license fee for the use of your device.”
He was desperate. We had to get out of here. Severin had a reason why he didn’t want to let us go without an agreement, and we had to know what it was.
“Perhaps if your people drew up an agreement,” I said, “and then sent it to Orlena, so we know exactly what we’re being offered? It’s never a good idea to bind a promise on a handshake. But if we had the offer on paper, that would help make the terms clear.”
Severin stared at me, his expression troubled. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll have an offer drawn up. Expect it soon.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Orlena said, and bowed. We followed her lead, echoing her thanks.
Severin picked up an amethyst pen with silver overlay and turned his attention to a document on his desk. “You may go.”
Three steps backward, nod, and turn. We filed out of the office, and the remaining door guard led us out of the parlor and through the palace, dumping us out near the palace square, where the protestors that irritated Severin so much still stood.
There was no sleigh waiting to take us home.
“I have to get back to the firm,” Orlena said. “Are you certain refusing the King is the best idea?”
“No,” I said. “But now we have more time to
figure out what to do, at least. We can talk about it at dinner?”
“I might have to stay late,” Orlena said. “I never told anyone I was going to be gone all afternoon. But as soon as we can, yes.”
Orlena waved and set off toward downtown, leaving Zelind and me on the edge of the square.
“I just turned down half a million marks,” Zelind said. “Am I doing the right thing?”
“You can always change your mind,” I said.
“I know,” Zelind said. “Who was that man, anyway? You went stiff and angry when you saw him.”
“That was Sir Christopher Hensley, the man who had you locked up, and who made millions because of it.”
“And he’s a confidant of the King,” Zelind said. Khe looked back at the palace, at its hundreds of windows, and a decision set in kher eyes. “No. I’m not giving my invention to the King. Not for half a million marks. Not for a million. Let’s go canvas Hillside. You have an election to win.”
FOURTEEN
The End of a Judge
We covered all of Riverside in the following days. Volunteers reported to the Solidarity Center by the hundreds. In the evenings, Zelind built a larger model of kher turbine, refining the design and looking for improvements, readying kherself to present the idea to the public after the election.
Four days before voting day, Zelind and I received a carefully printed invitation from Jean-Marie, inviting us to the housewarming feast of Clan Cage. Zelind wore kher worn and patched sweater for the evening, and we cycled on a thin dusting of snow to Riverside’s newest clan house.
The Princess Mary Hotel gleamed. We exclaimed over the hard work Clan Cage had done to rehabilitate the hotel, now flaunting its grand decorations and elegant design. Jean-Marie took us on a tour that walked us through a kitchen capable of producing a banquet for hundreds, steamy and delicious-smelling with braised goat stew and baked apple tarts.
“I’m so hungry already,” Zelind said, lifting a pot lid.
“You put that down!” Murray scolded. “You’re our guests. Go be guests where you belong.”
Banished, we found a seat at one of three long tables, nodding to neighbors from the clans invited to mark the first night members of Clan Cage would sleep in the Princess Mary. We dug our thumbs into crusty bread and dipped buttered chunks into the rich sauce the goat had simmered in.