by Sales, Ian
“Shouldn’t you have been at work today?” he asked her as they entered the kitchen. It had just occurred to him.
She set about fetching food from various cupboards. “I’m on holiday,” she replied. “From today. I’ve took some of my paid leave. Just for a couple of days, though.” She looked back over her shoulder and smiled at him. “Just until we’ve got you sorted.”
“I suppose I should look for a job soon.” Ormuz fingered the escutcheon on his collar. He had access to as many crowns as he needed using that coat of arms, but he’d sooner earn money of his own.
“If you think you should,” Azeel said absently. “Now let me make lunch. Go and watch a news channel or something.” She gestured him away.
Halfway across the landing to the living-room, Ormuz stopped and glanced back at the kitchen doorway. He felt… domestic. This moment was so unremarkably normal, it reminded him of his childhood years on Rasamra. He had loved his parents unconditionally then, had believed they were his parents. The clear and certain knowledge he was not their son came later; as did the resentment. But he remembered those years of happiness and he had just felt an echo of those years touch him now.
He entered the living-room and dropped onto one of the settees. He felt himself a part of this place, written into its history—and into its future. He took special pleasure in the feeling. His thoughts turned to Azeel. The Admiral was hard but Azeel was soft; the Admiral was commanding but Azeel was merely bossy. He and Azeel had shared a bed the last two nights—her bed, as it was a double, unlike the one he used in the spare room. She was very different from the Admiral there, too. He bore no scars, which proved it.
He rose to his feet, crossed to the glass and turned it on before he embarrassed himself by dwelling too much on the physical side of his relationship with Azeel. He clicked idly through a few channels before finding one that broadcast only news. It was a proletarian channel, but never mind. He returned to the settee.
The glass suddenly went black. Worried, Ormuz sat forward. Had it broken?
A voice intoned, “There now follows an announcement by the Imperial Bureau of Promulgation.”
The screen cleared to show a dark-haired woman sitting on an ornate chair in a large hall. Richly-dressed people lined a black carpet leading up to her.
“Inni!” called Ormuz. “You’d better come and see this.”
The camera panned forward and the woman grew larger. Now her face filled the glass. With a sinking heart, Ormuz recognised her.
The Admiral.
“Inni!” he called, more urgently.
She must be wearing a wig, he thought. She looked odd with hair, not at all like the person he knew, the woman he’d loved and left.
Azeel appeared in the doorway. “What is it?” she asked. “Did you break it?”
“No. He pointed at the glass. “Look. It’s the new Empress.”
Together, they watched the broadcast. Empress Flavia explained that her father had stepped down from the Imperial Throne due to ill-health. This condition had been brought on by the siege of the Imperial Palace by the rebel Duke of Ahasz. Empress Flavia hoped everyone would join her in wishing good health to her father. Although she had been away from Shuto for many years, loyally serving the Empire as an officer of the Imperial Navy, she knew she could rely on her advisors to assist her in the difficult times ahead. In truth, she believed her time in the Navy would be a boon to her reign as she had experienced at first hand so many different parts of the Empire. For now, there would be a short period of transition for the regnal government, and no doubt for the civil government too, but this was first and foremost a time for celebration. The official coronation would take place that night in the Old Palace. All subjects of the Empire on Shuto were encouraged to hold their own celebrations, and tomorrow would be a public holiday.
There was no mention of Prince Hubret, or his removal from the line of succession. Nothing about was said regarding the Admiral’s mutiny.
The glass faded to black.
“Well, that was interesting.”
Azeel’s hand had stolen into his during the broadcast. She pulled it free. “It’s not something you see every day,” she said, “but it’ll just be more work for us.”
He looked at her, puzzled.
She explained, “Where do you think most folk will want to celebrate?” She shook her head wryly. “We’re going to be busy tonight.”
“Is that all you can think of?” Ormuz demanded. “What about the fact that she’s on the Throne now?”
“‘She’? You say that like you know something about her I don’t, Cas.”
He snapped his mouth shut.
“She’s been gone a long time, fair enough,” Azeel continued. “But it’s not like much has changed for us over the years. Or even longer, if you look in the history books. I suppose she might make a few new laws, but it’s not like we’re all going to get a vote in the Electorate or anything.”
“She took the Throne by force.”
“No, she didn’t. She said her father is ill and he stepped down.”
Ormuz shook his head. “No, she told him to step down. He didn’t have any choice. Remember what Edkar I did when he came back from the War with the Baal?”
Of course she did. Every child in the Empire learnt it at school.
He continued, “She did the same. She turned up here with a massive fleet behind her. And an army. That’s how she lifted the siege and arrested Ahasz.”
Azeel frowned. “How do you know this, Cas?”
“I— um, someone told me.”
She smiled. “Well, there you go. Unless you were there yourself, you can’t know what happened. You’re just being silly and repeating rumours.”
“Remember the Oppie inspector who brought me this?” He took his collar and thrust his escutcheon at Azeel. “She was there, in the room when the Ad— the Empress told her father to step down.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes,” Azeel said with a shrug. “They could put a second cousin three times removed on the Throne and I’ll still have to pay taxes and Tithe.” She tapped her own escutcheon, pinned to the collar of the top she wore. “And wear this.”
“Don’t you think it’s important? She was a mutineer for six years and then she seized the Throne from her father.”
“Mutineer? She was in the Navy.”
“I went to Kukoi yesterday to see some friends in the Navy leave. They used to serve on the Empress’s battlecruiser. They’ve been demoted and sent to the Boundary Fleet.”
Azeel rose to her feet. Looking down at Ormuz, she said sadly, “Why are you doing this? You don’t need to tell tales to me. I know you came all the way to Shuto from some province weeks and weeks away, but just because you’re on Shuto now it doesn’t mean you can pretend to know everyone, even high nobles.”
Wearing an air of disappointment like a winter coat, Azeel left the room.
The door to the Empress Glorina banged open. Ormuz looked up from the table he was wiping down and frowned. His frown deepened when he saw the pair of men armed with maces in the doorway. They stepped into the pub and carefully scanned the room. A third man entered. He wore a sword.
The pub’s half a dozen customers stared at the three intruders.
A fourth figure swept inside: a woman, a very beautiful woman. From her dress alone, she was clearly noble—a jacket and trousers in red, a winged snake in gold thread embroidered on one lapel of the jacket, flimsy high-heeled shoes plainly unsuited for the outdoors. Ormuz put down his wet cloth and peeled the rubber gloves from his hands. He recognised the woman, although he had never met her before. She had hair of a dark lustrous red, and features of a familiar cast.
She crossed to the bar, seeming to glide, stopped and turned to gaze about the room. Her gaze swept past Ormuz, checked, then returned to him. She arched an eyebrow sardonically.
“You must be Casimir,” she said as she approached him.
Her voice was low and musical.
“You must be Lady Mayna,” he replied. “Your ladyship.”
“Yes.” She turned to peer at her surroundings, then looked down at the cloth and gloves on the table behind Ormuz. “But what are you doing here? The hero of the hour, cleaning tables in some hovel in the city’s worst district.”
“I live here now, your ladyship. I’m with my equals.”
He saw Azeel enter the room and sidle behind the bar. Her eyes widened as she saw Lady Mayna.
“You can’t stay here, my dear. It’s not fitting.”
“Fitting for who? For a prole, it’s as good a place as any other.” He looked across at Azeel and added, “Better, in fact.”
Lady Mayna gestured dismissively. “I can’t have you staying here.”
“I don’t see how it affects you, your ladyship.”
“No?” She arched an eyebrow, reached out with one hand and carressed Ormuz’s cheek. “Casimir, you’re one of us. As soon as I had intelligence of your whereabouts, I had to come and rescue you.”
“I don’t need rescuing.”
“Of course you do. Come, let us go. No need to pack, we’ll get you everything you need.”
“Go? Where?”
“To my townhouse, of course. Why must you insist on being so obtuse? Really, Casimir. You are family and you belong among Vonshuans. All this unpleasantness over your status we will soon have cleared up.”
“They’ll never let you give me the duchy.”
“I don’t intend to give you the duchy. A new duke has already been chosen. But at the very least you’ll be living in the proper style while we petition to have you recognised.”
“Inni comes with me.”
“Who?”
“Inni.” He indicated Azeel behind the bar.
“Why?” Lady Mayna shrugged a shoulder elegantly. “Oh very well. Bring her.”
Ormuz left the marchioness and crossed to Azeel. He reached across the bar and took her hand. “Come on,” he said. “Time to pack.”
Upstairs in the room he shared with Azeel, Ormuz pulled his newly-bought clothes from the wardrobe and threw them carelessly onto on the bed. From the top-shelf of the closet, he pulled down a battered holdall. He began to bundle his clothing into the bag.
Azeel had made no move. She stared at Ormuz’s holdall.
“She won’t wait forever,” he said.
Azeel turned to him. “I believed you when you said you were a prole,” she said, voice flat. “You’re very good at it.” She lifted her eyes and he saw tears begin to bead in them. “Did you have fun?” she asked.
“I am a prole,” Ormuz replied, hurt by her reaction.
“You’re a Vonshuan!” Azeel hissed. “She said so.” She folded her arms tightly across her bosom and blinked repeatedly.
“I’m a prole.” He growled in exasperation. “It’s complicated.”
“Doesn’t seem complicated to me.”
“I’m not really a Vonshuan. Casimir Ormuz is the name I was born with. If I called myself Vonshuan, it’d be arrogation.”
Azeel frowned as she considered this. “Arrogation?” Abruptly, her face went blank as realisation struck. “Oh. Of course. You’re a by-blow.”
“No! Well, yes.” If that made sense to her, Ormuz decided, then best let her think it.
“And the duchess?”
“Marchioness, she’s a marchioness. She’s my, er, father’s sister. My aunt, yes. My aunt.”
Azeel took one of Ormuz’s forearms with both hands. “Why are you going with her? You’re still a prole, no matter who your father was. You could stay here.” Her hands squeezed his arm in anguish. “Especially since it’s him. That’s not a relationship you really want to tell people about it.”
“You’re coming too,” Ormuz replied.
“I can’t leave my job, I can’t leave the pub.”
“Why not? Lady Mayna will clear it with your liege. You’re still on holiday anyway, so a couple days won’t make any difference.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Azeel snorted. “I can’t go live in a marchioness’s house.”
Ormuz crossed to the wardrobe and took a second holdall from the top shelf. He crossed to the chest of drawers and pulled open the top drawer. Scooping up handfuls of feminine underwear, he shoved them into the bag. From the wardrobe, he took dresses and skirts and jackets, and piled them on the bed.
“We need more bags,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Azeel asked plaintively. She glanced at the garments mounded on the bed.
“Yes, I’m sure. I told her I wanted you to come with me and she agreed. You heard her.”
“Marchionesses don’t make bargains with proles.”
“This one did. Now, let’s get your stuff packed.”
Azeel hurried from the bedroom and returned moments later with another pair of empty holdalls which had seen decades of use. Reluctantly, she collected her many pairs of shoes from the wardrobe and turned about.
Ormuz told her to go ahead. He was busy emptying the drawers.
By the time they had finished, three of the holdalls contained Azeel’s wardrobe and Ormuz’s attire filled only half of the last. He sighed as he hefted the bag, remembering the trunks of clothing he and Varä had bought on Kapuluan all those weeks ago. None of it had survived the destruction of Vengeful, but some of it had been replaced aboard Empress Glorina. And subsequently left there when he walked out on the Admiral.
They carried a pair of bags each down to the pub, Ormuz chivalrously taking the heaviest two. No sooner had he exited the door from the stairs then a man in Vonshuan livery stepped forward and took his holdalls from him.
He and Azeel—now also freed of her luggage—approached Lady Mayna. Ormuz took Azeel’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “We’re ready,” he said.
“So I see.” Lady Mayna sighed. She raised a hand and beckoned one of her entourage forward. An old woman, dressed in a dark suit, with grey hair in a neat chignon pierced by a pair of quills, approached. She wore no escutcheon.
“Apula, contact the young lady’s liege and explain her change in circumstances. As for you, Casimir, where in heavens did you get that coat of arms from? Surely that’s not the one you wore before.”
Ormuz fingered his escutcheon. “From a, ah, friend. You needn’t worry about it. I’ll keep it for the time-being.”
If Lady Mayna’s intentions were not to his taste, he could always leave. The coat of arms gave him access to money should he need it.
“Let us go, then,” Lady Mayna declared.
She turned and swept regally from the Empress Glorina.
Lady Mayna’s aerolaunch lifted from the street. Ormuz looked up through the aerocraft’s glass roof and saw the sides of tenements, the pillars supporting the elevated railway, scroll past. He lowered his head and peered through the large circular port beside his chair. The railway itself hove into view, slid from the top to the bottom of the port, and was gone. They were above the city now. He could see all the way across Chikogu, across Toshi. The bright ribbons of the roads. The rocky islands that were Rook and Ministries and Congress, and other noble eyries whose names he did not know. And there, forming the near horizon, the jagged escarpment which circled Gahara.
The aerolaunch swung about and began to accelerate towards the mountains.
He squeezed Azeel’s hand and glanced at her. She smiled tremulously, but her eyes were shining. He released her hand, snaked his arm about her waist and hugged her. Looking away, he saw Lady Mayna, lounging stylishly in the wide leather seat opposite, but he could not interpret the expression on her face. It had satisfaction in it; and hunger, perhaps.
Had he made a mistake? He had been happy, in a fashion, in the Empress Glorina. With Innelda Azeel. True, it had been an effort to act the prole every day, and the prospect of doing so for the rest of his life had lain heavily on him—for all his professed easy acceptance of his loss
of status.
Yet there was a puzzle here. Lady Mayna clearly loved her brother—enough to take his clone under her wing, although he and Ahasz were very different men. But in the nomosphere, she had actively schemed against the duke. She had made Ormuz what he was now. She had given him his mastery with the sword, his proficiency with the language of nobles, with the instinct for etiquette and behaviour necessary for a person of noble birth. Lady Mayna had, effectively, been instrumental in putting her brother in the House of Rectitude.
The aerolaunch passed over Gahara’s encircling hills. Ormuz twisted his head, the better to see down through the port. This, then, was the most prestigious part of Toshi, where all the highest nobles had their palaces and townhouses. It did not appear all that different to Chikogu. The buildings were larger, and in better repair, but the streets were still narrow and the houses tall, with many storeys and flat roofs.
The aerocraft approached one such roof. Ormuz judged it to be five storeys above the street. Painted on a deck in the centre of the roof was a symbol identifying it as a landing dock. The aerolaunch slowed as it drew near the building until it hung motionless above the dock. Ropes unravelled from fore and aft. People appeared on the dock, took the ropes, and attached them to small winches. The aerocraft began to smoothly descend.
Stepping out of the aerolaunch, Ormuz felt a brief moment of vertigo. There was no railing about the dock and he could imagine a fifty foot drop from the edge to stone streets. He turned as a hand took his arm and found Lady Mayna beside him.
“This way, my dear,” she said, and turned him about to where a trapdoor had opened in the dock’s surface, revealing a gentle ramp down into the townhouse’s interior. “Let’s see about getting you out of those horrible proletarians rags and into something more fitting to your station.”
Leaving Azeel to follow, Ormuz allowed himself to be led into Lady Mayna’s townhouse. They descended the ramp into an entrance hall. Lady Mayna’s staff and escort seemed to evaporate, leaving the marchioness, Ormuz and Azeel alone. It was an unexpectedly masculine space, panelled throughout in wood, with portraits of stern-looking ancestors hung on the walls to left and right. Beneath each painting sat a wing-necked leather armchair.