by Sales, Ian
Lady Mayna led the way to an elevator shaft and stepped into it. A platform appeared beneath her feet. Once her two guests had joined her, the lift began to descend. It halted on the third floor.
“Your room is that one there with the open door,” she said, indicating the room with a languid gesture. “I have business to attend to, so I shall leave you to settle in.”
Ormuz took Azeel’s hand and stepped from the lift. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the marchioness slowly and silently descend from sight. He turned back to look at the open double-doors ahead. Hand in hand, they walked towards it, along a corridor also panelled in a dark wood which seemed to drink in the summery glow of the light-panels. The thick maroon carpetted swallowed the sound of their footfalls.
They halted in the doorway of the room, and Ormuz reflected on the differences between the homes of proles and those of the high nobility. The upstairs flat at the Empress Glorina had comprised small, over-furnished rooms, comfortable if disordered. This drawing-room was as big as the Azeels’ entire apartment, but sparsely furnished for its size. A clutch of spindly sofas, clearly antiques, were grouped before a marble fireplace. A huge bureau occupied the wall opposite the fireplace, chairs were arranged against one wall, while in the wall opposite the door were three great windows. They gave a view out to sea, between the mountainous walls cupping Gahara Bay.
Azeel gasped. They walked forward and the hushed stillness of the room lent it an unreal aspect. Azeel turned away from him, and then pulled him about to face another set of double-doors. She started toward them.
The bedroom.
Azeel halted on the threshold. The bed was twice the size of the one Ormuz had shared with Azeel at the pub. It was covered with an embroidered counterpane depicting the Vonshuan winged snake.
Azeel pulled her hand from Ormuz. She ran forwards and, with a squeal, threw herself full-length onto the bed. She rolled onto her back, kicked her shoes from her feet and laughed.
“Oh Cas,” she said in wonder. “It’s fantastic!”
He crossed to the bed, sat on it beside her and put a hand on one hosed thigh. “Have we made a mistake?” he asked.
“She’s not put us in servant quarters! It’s amazing.” She swung onto her hip, her stomach pressed warmly against Ormuz’s side. “How can this be a mistake?” she demanded. “Oh it’s like some silly melodrama. Even if it only lasts a day, I’ll never forget it. Never.”
She sat up suddenly, threw her arms about Ormuz’s neck and kissed him.
Lady Mayna rose gracefully from the sofa and gestured Ormuz closer. She had changed her jacket and trousers for a long dress in forest-green, tight-fitting about her narrow waist, high-necked, and long-sleeved with built-in gloves. Serpentine designs in glossy thread of a darker green wove their way across the bodice.
“Please, sit,” Lady Mayna said.
Ormuz gave a quick bow—supplicant to grateful host, both of high rank. Lady Mayna let out a peal of delighted laughter. Ormuz lowered himself into the sofa opposite the marchioness.
For the first time since disembarking from Empress Glorina—the battleship not the pub—he felt relaxed. The clothes he now wore, a simple shirt and trousers, provided by Lady Mayna, were of high quality. He had worn similar aboard the battleship and Vengeful. He even had a sword hanging from his hip. It was perhaps a more ornate blade than he was used to, but he had checked and found its balance good and its point sharp.
Azeel remained upstairs in their suite, trying on items from the wardrobe provided her.
“We need to lay out a plan of action,” Lady Mayna said. “I’m told you comport yourself excellently and speak like a noble born.”
Ormuz said nothing.
“I also hear you’re a master swordsman.” Lady Mayna smiled. “But I very much doubt you’ll be needing to demonstrate that.”
“You should know,” Ormuz put in. “You made me one. You also taught me how to speak.”
“I did?” Lady Mayna raised an eyebrow and smiled. “But today is the first time we’ve met.”
“In person, perhaps. We met several times in the nomosphere.”
“So we did.” She gestured the acknowledgment away, as if it were an irrelevancy. “But we best not mention that. That is… information to be kept among us.”
“The Empress knows of it.”
“It is of no use to her now,” replied Lady Mayna dismissively. “We need to see about raising your status. I can sponsor you to yeoman. The Electorate may balk but I have my allies. Lifting you to a title—oh, I have many so finding a suitable one will not be a problem… As to that, we may encounter some problems. It will take time.”
“Why?” asked Ormuz.
“Why? Because it’s simply not done. There is much preparation required.”
“No, I mean: why are you doing this? What difference to you is it if I’m a prole, a yeoman or a noble?”
“Don’t be silly, Casimir. How can I socialise with you if you’re a prole?”
He leaned forward, putting a hand to his sword so it didn’t knock his knee. “But I am a prole,” he insisted. “I was born one.”
Lady Mayna sighed in exasperation. “This is getting tiresome, Casimir. You have spent a year pretending to be a prince.” She raised a finger in admonishment. “Yes, I have my sources. They called you ‘Prince Casimir’ aboard Vengeful, did they not? I know Flavia, the Empress, rejected you, but this… flaunting of your proletarian status will not bring her back.”
“I’m not flaunting it,” Ormuz replied mulishly.
“My dear, I am fully cognisant of the details of your birth, but you seem determined to make a point of it. This poor girl you’ve dragged along with you: you’re using her like an escutcheon, she’s your badge to show your proletarian rank. It’s very cruel of you. And very unfair on her.”
Ormuz stiffened. “No,” he protested. “I love her.”
“Do you really? She’s quite unsuitable, you know. I can’t introduce you into polite society with her at your side. It’s simply not possible.”
“She stays.”
He was not going to give up Azeel. He needed someone uncomplicated at his side. No, that was unfair. Azeel was not simple. But her relationship with him was uncomplicated. Lady Mayna wanted something from him—he did not believe she was driven by a need to replace the brother she would soon lose. But he could not see what possible use he might be to her.
Perhaps it was the nomosphere. The two of them were the only people he knew who could access it. The Serpent, the Duke of Ahasz, could too, of course. But he would never leave Shuto again. It might be that Lady Mayna wanted someone she could meet in the nomosphere and, as someone had pointed out on Vengeful all those weeks ago, so communicate instantly across weeks of travel-time.
It was, he supposed, an uncontroversial role to perform. It would not involve conspiring against the Imperial Throne. It would require travel—and he had always enjoyed travel.
“Very well,” said Lady Mayna, with a sigh. “Your paramour stays. We shall find some position for her on the books to account for her presence. For the time-being, you are both my guests. My staff are at your diposal. Please don’t leave the townhouse, however. You are safe here.”
Ormuz nodded. And he wondered if this could be the end. He had fought in a civil war, led the battle against the rebel duke who wished to change things, upheld the status quo. Then he had been discarded. He had no role to play in the future of the Empire, he had no future himself except obscurity. Lady Mayna offered him more—but it was not the destiny he had imagined for himself during the journey to Geneza.
He had lost that destiny when he threw down his sword at the Admiral’s feet.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
From the window of her office, Finesz could see Headquarters’ parade ground, and beyond that ordered lines of barracks blocks. They made her feel more like a soldier than an investigator. As did the uniform she must now wear every
day. Her cap hung rakishly from a peg on a stand beside her desk, her sword and sword-belt beside it. Her jacket was carefully draped on a hanger so it would not crease. She did not object to the uniform as such—if anything, she felt she looked rather dashing in it. But having to wear it every day, to salute and scrape and bow to those she met in Headquarters’ corridors, to actually turn up to work at a set time and be visibily working…
She had not joined the Office of the Procurator Imperial to become a bureaucrat.
With a sigh, she cupped her chin in her hand and continued to gaze out of the window. She’d put it off for as long as she could, but she’d always known that sooner or later she’d have to report to Headquarters and reveal she was back on Shuto. There was also the fact she wanted to look in the OPI archives for whatever it was Ahasz had been talking about.
One thousand years ago had been the height of the Intolerance, during the regency of Daemni, Poer I’s widow and Willim I’s grandmother. The Empire had been only a couple of centuries old and even then the Shutans were far from secure in their rule. The Pacification Campaigns were still carving out the provinces. Many of the Empire’s institutions had been founded during the Regency—the Imperial Regiments, Imperial Admiralty, Imperial Treasury… Could Ahasz have been referring to the attempted coup by the Imperial Guard? They had stormed the Imperial Palace as was—the Old Palace now—and been rebuffed. And subsequently disbanded and the regiment’s secret history made public.
Interesting times… Perhaps even as interesting as the present.
Or rather, they had been interesting. No longer. Finesz was no historian and could make little sense of the events she’d researched. Perhaps if she had more time… But no, she had other tasks and she could not see the sense of them at all. It was all make-work, she was convinced of it. Writing analyses of reports. Collating statistics. Dull, dull stuff. She hated it.
She wouldn’t be doing this if Norioko were still her superior. Reporting to Headquarters had been a mistake. She’d entered her office to discover she’d been transferred. She now reported to some grey humourless superintendent who seemed determined to punish her for her prior freedom of action.
She dropped her eyes and focused on the report on the glass laid flat into her desk. A listing of transactions by a syndicate of yeomanry. She’d been instructed to search for irregularities in the finances. But she couldn’t concentrate.
Ironically, financial irregularities were what had begun all this, that had sent her to Darrus on the trail of a regimental-lieutenant. Where she had met Caismir Ormuz. And somehow been recruited to his cause.
She couldn’t do it. With a sound of disgust, she pushed back her chair and rose to her feet. The report could wait. Superintendent Nudny could wait. She was in no mood to do this work now.
Finesz took her jacket from the hanger, pulled it on and buttoned it up. She fastened her sword-belt about her waist and set her cap on her head. She pulled open the door to her office and stepped out into the clerks’ office. None looked up as she marched past. They were not privy to her orders.
Fortunately, she had kept Troop-Sergeant Assaun. Possibly, she suspected, because Nudny did not want to pay the expense of returning him to Darrus. She only wished she could do so herself. The man deserved to go home. But for now he remained useful to her.
She picked him up from ready-room to which he had been assigned as she left the Enquiry Building. They commandeered a staff car from the transport pool and Assaun drove her north out of the city.
This thousand-year-old mystery: she need to ask Ahasz about it. She had a handful of disparate historical events and not one of them seemed relevant to the recent rebellion. Another coup by descendants of the Imperial Guard? It was laughable. No one held a grudge for a millennium. How many generations had passed since then? Forty or more.
Throughout the trip to the House of Rectitude, Finesz considered her ancient history. Enemies a-plenty had been made in those far-off days. Not just the Imperial Guard or the Henotic Church, but also all those worlds which were “persuaded” to join the Empire during the Pacification Campaigns.
She was no closer an answer when the staff car finally drew up before the main entrance to the House. Assaun scrambled from behind the wheel and hurried to open her door. As she climbed out, she looked up to see the warden descend from the front door. She opened her mouth to greet him, but was surprised into silence by the expression on his face.
“Are you here to see his grace, my lady?” he asked mournfully.
She was immediately suspicious. “Yes. Why?”
“Then you were not informed?”
“Not informed of what?” She glanced back at Assaun, who now stood on the other side of the car. But he hid his mystification as well as he hid all his emotions.
Turning back to the warden, she said, “What’s going on? What’s happened to Ahasz?”
“Oh dear. I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid his grace was executed yesterday.”
For one brief vertiginous moment, Finesz thought she had misheard the man. Executed? That had been the expected sentence, yes. But after due process of law, after Ahasz had been indicted, found guilty in a court of law and sentenced.
Not secretly.
“You killed him?” she asked in disbelief.
“Not myself, no, my lady. Some gentlemen from the Imperial Household visited and his grace was permitted to take poison.”
“You allowed this?”
The warden wobbled his head. “I am no position to refuse them, my lady. They represented the Imperial Throne and had all suitable documentation. It is the Throne’s privilege to demand execution without trial for certain felonies.”
Finesz closed her eyes and screwed her hands into fists. She was still finding this difficult to credit. “No,” she said slowly, trying hard to keep her voice even. “No, the Throne does not have that privilege. Only the Bench can dispense justice. It’s in the Subject’s Charter—‘all subjects have the right to representation in law’.”
“I am not a jurist,” the warden complained. “They were careful to explain to me that they operated within the law. How was I to know they lied?”
She turned away from him. Eyes narrowed, she gazed the length of the drive to the bailey. Empress Flavia had murdered Ahasz. The woman who had once loved the duke had executed him secretly and illegally.
And there was nothing Finesz could do about it.
There was nothing anyone could do.
“This is bad,” she muttered.
Her hand was aching. She had been clutching the hilt of her sword, so hard she could feel the knobs and whorls of the pommel etched into her palm. She let go, brought her hand up before her face and flexed her fingers thoughtfully.
She had felt powerless many times. On occasion, she had felt fear too as a result of that powerlessness. At Headquarters, she had no authority, no responsibility. They would not discharge her unless she did something indictable. They knew she still hadd friends and allies on Ministries and Congress. Instead, they gave her trivial make-work tasks.
That was powerlessness.
During the siege, when she had tried to reason with Ahasz and he had taken her prisoner. Then she had been powerless and she had felt fear.
Now, she felt both again. She knew she could say nothing, do nothing.
Finesz returned to Toshi with no destination in mind. Ahasz’s death had entirely destroyed her future. She did not know what to do, she did not know where to go. She had questions but no answers.
She would not return to Headquarters. She’d had enough of the OPI. She’d send them her resignation later. She thought about going home but she needed to tell someone what had happened to the duke.
But who?
Casimir Ormuz, of course.
She leaned forward and said to Assaun, “We need to go to Gahara. The townhouse of the Marchioness Angra.”
Lady Mayna had taken Ormuz under her wing the day before.
He needed to know—they both needed to know—what had happened to Ahasz. Finesz thought it unlikely they had been told.
She stared out of the window of the staff car as it returned to Toshi, her chin in her hand, the scenery passing unnoticed before her gaze. She should, she supposed, feel anger at such a blatant disregard for the rule of law. And she had liked Ahasz. She felt as though a friend had been murdered. Perhaps that explained the numbness.
Something else had died too, however. The system she had held dear, the reason she had chosen to wear this black uniform… everything, in fact, represented by the sword on her shoulder and on the sides of her staff car. What was it Ahasz had said? Empress Flavia is “a firm believer in justice”. Apparently not.
Yet Finesz had met Empress Flavia—the Admiral, as was—on a number of occasions. She could not say she knew the woman but this secret execution did seem out of character. Finesz had known the Admiral was a hard woman—She had, after all, mutinied because She thought it the only way to safeguard the Imperial Throne. And Rinharte had mentioned several instances of commerce raiding during those mutinous six years. Not to mention forcing Ormuz’s data-freighter, Divine Providence, to crash on Bato.
The Empress and Ahasz had history, of course. Had She hated him so much She’d do this? Yet Ahasz had hinted that their enmity was as much a part of a conspiracy as the millennia-old mystery he had mentioned.
Finesz blinked and realised the staff car was climbing the main road into Gahara. The journey from the House of Rectitude had seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. She sighed and sat back in her seat, her arms tightly folded across her bosom.
She remained in that pose as the vehicle entered the narrow streets of Gahara and eventually pulled up at the main entrance to Lady Mayna’s residence. An under-butler hurried out from the townhouse and pulled open Finesz’s door.