How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse--Book One of the Thorne Chronicles

by K. Eason

  It was fear. Not the sort that crept up on her in the dark, at night, while the palace muttered to itself and shadows against the wall took on the exact shape of the monster from the ’cast she wasn’t supposed to have watched so close to bedtime. This was the kind of fear that made koi scatter into the center of the pool and dive under the broad razor-leaves when a dayowl’s shadow crossed the water. Threat. A sudden strike, a more sudden end.

  An older Rory might have hesitated, or examined the impulse. Fortunately for Rory, Ivar, and the universe, Rory was young and quicker-witted than she was wise. She grabbed Ivar’s hand, which felt a little bit like a dead fish. She wanted to drop it, but she didn’t.

  “We have a koi pond,” she blurted. “Would you like to see it, Prince Ivar? We can even feed them. They’re very tame.”

  Ivar hadn’t decided yet what he should do about his imprisoned hand. He turned an alarming shade of pink. He held the contaminated arm out stiffly, as if he were trying to get as far away from it as possible. At her question, his face had a tiny seizure.

  She thought it was supposed to be a smile.

  “Um. If it, ah, pleases my, ah, lady.”

  No. He was terrified. Of koi. She knew the impatience showed on her face. Heard it in her own voice. Messer Rupert would have been

  embarrassed to death, my Princess

  mortified, but he wasn’t here.

  “Koi are fish, Ivar. You know. Fish? They live in water. Swim around?” She wiggled the fingers of her free hand. Ivar stared at her, very much like the baby koi did. Round. Unblinking. Unaware of the dangers of dayowls.

  She seized on a sudden idea. “They’re animals. Like tree-rats, only wet all the time.”

  Ivar brightened. He looked at his body-man, who seemed to consider. Head cocked, eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance. A man thinking, except he looked more like one of the guards getting orders from the little earbuds. He was listening to something, or someone, only he had no earbuds.

  Rory’s mind shot along half a dozen new vectors. What could she say to convince him, could she just drag this Ivar after her, should she leave him, what could she actually do—

  But the body-man refocused on them both. Smiled, a more natural expression on his face than on Ivar’s, and said, “Go along, your Highness.” Then he turned to Rory and bent double at the waist: “It was very fine to have met you, Princess.”

  That was truth. And more than truth, that was relief. He wanted them to go, both of them, very much and right now.

  The body-man was afraid, too, except unlike Rory, he knew exactly why.

  Rory tugged the prince’s dead fish hand.

  “Come on. Let’s go now, Prince Ivar.”

  Because he was a biddable boy, and accustomed to doing as he was told, Ivar came along. Quick steps at first, and then, when Rory made it clear she wasn’t slowing down, and that he could either keep up or be dragged, an all-out, clumsy run.

  It was during that run that Ivar, who was not a natural athlete, tripped over his uncomfortable shoes, which were too stiff, and fell, and pulled Rory down with him. Ivar scuffed both palms and tore a hole in his trousers. Rory’s dress survived, but her knees did not. The tumble laid them both flat, and required some moments of recovery—much fast blinking and brave sniffing and no tears at all from Ivar, about whom Rory had harbored some doubt, and only a wince from Rory herself. But because of those moments, Princess Rory Thorne and Prince Ivar Valenko were essentially unharmed when Ivar’s body-man walked into the Thorne palace and detonated himself just past the front foyer.

  The shockwave flattened several structures more sturdy than children, and tossed debris about with lethal consequences. The koi, safe in their pond, survived. Twenty human adults, including Ivar’s father, King Sergei Valenko of the Free Worlds of Tadesh, did not. Rory’s own father, King Philip Thorne, survived the blast for a time, although that was no kindness on the part of the multiverse.

  The incident started two wars, one civil and one inter-planetary, and plunged several solar systems into piracy and lawlessness. It was also how Grytt came to have a few more mecha implants, and how the Consort added Regent to her title.

  And it marked the end of Rory Thorne’s childhood, by whatever measure one employs.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Neither Apology Nor Accusation

  The name the Free Worlds of Tadesh was misleading, as it did not describe worlds, but rather a far-flung string of colonies, mining outposts, and massive void-stations orbiting rich, inhospitable planets. Nor were the Free Worlds especially free, being instead a hereditary monarchy whose acquisition (and retention) of those far-flung colonies and mining outposts had come quite often as a result of military intervention and a certain suppression or suspension of freedoms.

  The Vizier had much time to contemplate these facts on the journey from Thorne. As the Consortium’s official representative, he accompanied King Sergei Valenko’s remains (a more apt term than body in this instance) and the Prince on the Tadeshi ship that had brought them. It was not the Vizier’s first time acting as diplomat, nor even his first time to the Free Worlds of Tadesh. It was, however, his first visit to the Tadeshi capital, an ancient void-station called Urse that threaded an orbit between two massive gas giants, which, in turn, orbited an unassuming yellow star. The massive void-ships were too large to dock at any void-station, even one as large as Urse, and so visitors were obliged to travel by shuttle. Thus, after the ships arrived at the system’s gate, through which all tesser-hexing ships came and went, the royal remnants, Prince, and important visitors faced several hours of sublight void-flight before reaching their destination.

  Ordinarily, the Vizier would have used the time to catch up on work, but he considered himself well-versed in the Free Worlds’ political disposition already. So he passed the journey by staring at the viewscreens, which piped in a steady stream of images from the shuttle’s exterior, and considering the marvels of planets, and the cleverness of humanity for traversing the void. He also contemplated the vulnerability of that clever flesh, defended from aetherless, unbreathable void and lethal cold by metal and arithmancy. And he considered, with considerably more concern, how very many Tadeshi warships there were crowded into the system. He knew there was a marine training base on one of the local moons, but these ships were, to his unmilitary eye, rather more than standard, in both number and disposition, than one would need for a training facility, or even for a King’s state funeral. They looked a bit like an armada.

  The Vizier opened his tablet, without taking his eyes off the viewscreen, and made a note. Then, upon consideration, he added an extra layer of cryptographic hexwork.

  He made still more notes upon docking at Urse. He noted that the coffin bearing the King was unloaded first, followed by the dry-eyed Prince, who was clutching a small stuffed animal, and that they were received by the security officers wearing dress uniforms and representatives of the Tadeshi Council. The Vizier, familiar with their names and faces from files and his aforementioned predilection to study, recognized the Ministers of Defense, Commerce, Education, and Foreign Affairs. He did not, at first glance, recognize the handsome blond man wearing councilor’s robes at the head of the delegation. He frowned and consulted his tablet. Ah. He frowned a little more deeply. That was Vernor Moss, the new Minister of Energy, which was a relatively minor position on the Council, and not the sort of person one expected to receive the body of an assassinated king. And if it seemed a trifle odd that Minister Moss would be among those to receive the King’s coffin, it seemed even more so that he took immediate, physical charge of Prince Ivar.

  The Vizier felt a chill that had nothing to do with the dry, dockside station air, and entertained a momentary wish to turn round and return to the relative safety of the shuttle. Instead, he squared his shoulders and came down the ramp, one more functionary among many, and so unremarked.

  T
hat anonymity would not, however, continue. The Vizier expected a request for an audience in the near future. And indeed, that summons came the following morning: a note, real paper (which was its own communication: paper was expensive, and also private, immune as it was to hexes and hacking), folded and sealed, delivered to the Thorne embassy by a black-uniformed Tadeshi security officer. The contents were politically predictable: the Vizier’s presence was requested by the Council at such-and-such time, et cetera. The Vizier read it twice, and then started to fold it up. But something about the seal at the bottom struck him as, not exactly wrong, but—no, it was exactly wrong. He unfolded the paper and took the summons over to the desk, closer to the small, bright lamp standing watch over his tablet and the small pile of real paper that seemed to proliferate wherever the Vizier tried to do any work, and tilted the paper into light.

  The state seal of the Free Worlds of Tadesh was an elaborate thing, curlicues and braids and a slogan written in archaic script in a dead language circling its lower edge. The royal Tadeshi seal was identical, except for a tiny set of crossed swords and a crown in what would otherwise be an empty patch just above that slogan. This summons should have come with a Council seal at the bottom—that is, the seal without the crown and swords. The Free Worlds had a clear line of succession. If a seated King died, his Queen—whether or not she came from the royal line—assumed the crown. Even without a formal coronation, the Queen was the head of state, and by all rights and rules was the only person authorized to use that seal.

  The Vizier touched the very tip of his finger to the crown-and-swords on the seal on his summons. Then he blinked, and folded the paper, and tapped the edge against his fingertips and stared very hard at nothing at all for a long fistful of minutes. He knew the Queen was en route back to Urse from an interrupted tour of the outer colonies, and that she had not yet arrived. So either her entire tour had been a ruse in which the Tadeshi media had been complicit, or someone else was using the royal seal to conduct government business. And if the latter was true—sending, and using, that seal sent its own message.

  The Vizier set the paper down gently beside his turing terminal. He considered whether or not he should acknowledge that message when he met with the sender. He would be a poor vizier indeed if he failed to notice a royal seal in place of a standard government sigil; but there was no reason to suppose whoever had used that seal knew what sort of vizier he was, or had any special expectations of him, and the seal might be a test, of sorts. A measure of the Consortium’s strength and worth, marked by its willingness to chastise a not-quite-ally on the eve of a state funeral. The Vizier considered that his own king was currently badly wounded and lying in a hospital. He considered that his Consort was heavily pregnant, and the only living heir was a princess not yet ten years old. And he decided, in that moment, that it was better to be supposed feckless, and perhaps a bit of a fool, to whomever was using the Tadeshi royal seal, than a threat.

  So when the Vizier selected his robes for the meeting, he chose the set with the barest bit of fraying on the left sleeve cuff. He poured a bit of ink out into the sink and rubbed his fingertips in it, until the flesh under the nails turned indigo. He pulled several strands of hair out of their braid and let them corkscrew out of the side of his head as if he’d been caught in a spring windstorm. Then he hexed his aura to conceal strong emotional reactions. Such hexing is standard practice among diplomats, and requires the sort of rudimentary arithmancy one acquires in primary school, and generally takes a only a few seconds. The Vizier, whose arithmancy was considerably more advanced, applied a more elaborate hex that took several minutes. He did not merely wish to conceal his emotions; he wished to present precisely what the observer most expected to see.

  Then he went to keep the appointment. Along the way—and it was a short walk from the embassy to the municipal complex, a fifty meter stroll across a wide station corridor and up the ring—he counted the number of black uniforms dotting the otherwise colorful crowds. There were not as many as one might expect, given that the King had died by a Tadeshi assassin. And he noted the unexpectedly few security personnel were inversely proportional to the number of clerks and minor functionaries and liveried servants clogging the corridors of the municipal complex.

  The Vizier was a cautious man, disinclined to paranoid imaginings, preferring to amass and analyze all available data before reaching a conclusion. The increased number of servants could be a result of the sheer number of foreign and domestic representatives arriving on Urse by the hour. The paucity of security could be because the screening hexes at the docks were very, very good, or because no one would be foolish enough to attempt an explosion on an aether-station, with merciless void on the other side. Or, he admitted to himself with some reluctance, because the person in charge of dispensing security was unworried about a repeat act of violence, which brought with it a host of questions whose answers promised to be as unsettling as the unofficial armada hovering in the system.

  The Vizier passed through the doors, which bore the same royal seal as his invitation, and was immediately hailed—shouted at, really—by a blinking, roundish individual who, having screeched your excellency the Vizier of Thorne across a crowded foyer, could not be persuaded to speak above a marble-mouthed murmur while he guided the Vizier through a labyrinth of corridors and finally deposited him in a lush conference room.

  The Vizier noted the breadth of the table, and the conservatively beautiful artwork on three bulkheads and the row of portholes on the other. He noted the pair of chairs, and surmised which was meant to be his by its proximity to the door through which he had entered the room, and its distance from a smaller door on the opposite side of both room and table. It was the sort of door a king or a queen might enter through, to avoid hallway traffic. Whoever would come through that door was not worried about assassins or security at all, which suggested either a fool or someone with reasons not to worry. Then he sat down, folded his hands on the table, and waited. At precisely two minutes past the appointed time, the Minister of Energy entered the conference room through that small door.

  The Vizier supposed he had enough data now to reach a conclusion. He rose.

  “My lord Vizier,” the Minister said crisply. “How kind of you to agree to meet me.”

  “Minister,” the Vizier said. The social rank between a minister and a vizier was such that a handshake should have sufficed as a gesture of greeting. The Minister had not yet extended his hand, and the Vizier considered for less than a breath extending his. Then he brushed across the Minister’s icy blue eyes and bowed instead, his deliberately ink-stained fingers pressed together in front of his chest, as if to a superior. “On behalf of the Thorne Consortium, Minister, let me extend our deepest sympathies and regret for the loss of King Sergei.”

  “Thank you,” said Minister Moss. His gaze flickered over the Vizier, marking every loose hair, every smudge, every wrinkle. One corner of his mouth quirked with a mild, condescending amusement. “Allow me to express our dismay that his Majesty, King Philip, was also harmed in the incident. I trust he is recovering?”

  The Vizier hoped his own expression was better behaved. “King Philip is receiving the best medical care our chirurgeons can provide, Minister.”

  The Minister rearranged his features into a careful mask of regret. “The Free Worlds of Tadesh hope for his swift recovery.”

  The Vizier bowed again. “Thank you, Minister.”

  “And please extend our regard to the Consort in what must be a difficult time.”

  The Vizier blinked and held his bow a half-heartbeat longer while he schooled his own face into obedience. The seal was not the only royal prerogative the Minister was using: he’d assumed the pronouns, too.

  “Of course, Minister. I am certain she will appreciate the thoughtfulness. She is hoping to place a quantum-hex call to the Queen on the day of the funeral to convey her personal regrets. I was hoping to arrange tha
t with you today, so that I can advise her Grace of the Queen’s availability.”

  Now it was the Minister’s turn for an extra second of hesitation. Then he flattened his lips into what the Vizier imagined was meant to be a small, pained smile, and which instead looked like the Councilor had eaten something disagreeable. “The Queen is conducting a tour of the outer colonies, and even by tesser-hex, her return will take more time than is seemly for our King to wait for his funeral. We can arrange for a call upon her return to Urse, when I am certain she will be glad to hear from the Consort.”

  The Vizier forbore a comment that the King was, in fact, beyond inconvenience or scandal at this point. He also forbore to point out that the minimum time between a Tadeshi monarch’s death and his funeral was five days, five, and that waiting for the Queen’s return would in no way scandalize anyone.

  Instead, what he said was, “I see.” He allowed his hands to flutter like nervous birds.

  The Minister of Energy noticed those fluttering hands, and his lip curled just the slightest bit.

  The Vizier, in turn, noticed that smile, and his gut coiled into a cold knot, one part fear, two parts anger. Protocol and his good sense said he should wait to be dismissed: the Minister clearly considered himself the ranking official, in possession of both royal seal and royal pronouns, and making an enemy of him would be both easy and dangerous.

  But then the Vizier thought about the Princess Rory, who, but for her own disregard for protocol, might have been within the blast-radius when the body-man detonated himself, and he straightened. “Thank you again for your time, Minister.”

  The Minister of Energy raised one fine, blond brow. “Thank you, Vizier.”

  And so the first, and last, audience between the Vizier of Thorne and the Minister of Energy came to an end.