by K. Eason
“No.” Rory scrambled to her feet, discovering along the way that hours spent in drafty stone alcoves stiffen even young muscles. She caught her balance on the wall and scraped her knuckle on the brick. The surprise of that, coupled with her general discomfort and threadbare patience, brought tears prickling to the back of her eyes. Her throat sealed around the rest of her answer. Only a tiny squeak escaped. She was horrified. She blinked hard, bit her lip, and tried to make herself stern-faced and grim. She failed miserably.
Her mother’s frown deepened. “Rory,” she said, and her voice was too gentle for the storm gathering in her eyes. “What happened?”
In a very short time, Rory would learn that the safest answer to that question and its sibling, what are you doing, is an ingenuous nothing, particularly if there is no evidence to the contrary. At the time, however, she knew only that her knuckle was bleeding, her bottom hurt, and her mother could fix everything.
The words spilled out like rice from a cut sack. “I came to see Jacen, but Deme Isabelle said he was sleeping, only he wasn’t, and she wouldn’t let me in.”
Rory paused for a breath, and considered adding what Deme Isabelle hadn’t said, about giving orders and proper heirs, but the Regent-Consort’s lips were drawing together like a miser’s purse strings. If there had been a Kreshti fern present, it would have turned a deep cerise laced with adamant aubergine.
“Come along,” the Regent-Consort said, and took Rory’s hand.
Within very short order, Deme Isabelle found the Prince transferred to his mother’s arms and herself sent to supper rather abruptly, on the very edge of courtesy.
“If you hurry, you’ll be able to eat with the rest of the staff.” The Regent-Consort smiled broadly, showing nearly all of her teeth. It would have been a lovely smile, had there been any warmth at all in it. Instead, the effect was rather predatory.
Deme Isabelle dropped an old woman’s curtsy to the Regent-Consort. “As you wish, your Grace. Thank you, your Grace.”
She crossed stares with Rory. One heartbeat. Two. Then she departed with as much dignity as she could manage. Her stare lingered, even after the door closed, dragging on Rory’s skin like old nails.
Rory had never seen hatred before, nor had she ever had an enemy. Her belly felt cold, deep inside, and the space between her shoulder blades itched. It was not an urgent sensation, like her fear of the body-man had been. A more patient cousin, perhaps, like ice on the courtyard in winter, appearing underfoot when you had both hands in your pockets and no way of catching yourself when you fell. Rory rubbed her cheek, remembering that lesson. In another heartbeat, she would have made a note to herself to tell Grytt about it. But then her mother interrupted,
“Here, Rory,” and handed her a squirming blanketed bundle. “Meet your little brother.”
And in that moment, Rory forgot about Deme Isabelle entirely.
Jacen had the smallest fingers in all the world, and a cap of dark soft hair that wasn’t sure if it should curl or simply stick straight out. His beautiful blue eyes, just like her father’s, stared up into hers. In that moment, she imagined a future in which she showed him the koi, and taught him to climb trees, and shared the best places to hide from Messer Rupert. Oh, she knew that would not happen for a long time—he was so tiny! so red!—but he would grow. Babies did. He would become a person, and he would be her brother, and in that moment, Rory thought that was the best possible thing in the world.
Then Jacen screwed up his face and howled and would not stop, no matter how Rory tried to soothe him. He only quieted when she gave up and handed him back to her mother. Then he stuck both fingers in his mouth and stared at her, red-faced and unhappy. Each time she tried to hold him, he howled.
This would become the pattern that defined their relationship.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Heir And The Spare
Some infants are sweet little creatures, easily pleased and contented. They do not cry often, and when they do, it is for a purpose: hunger, or wetness, or an aggressive burp meandering through their interiors.
Jacen was not one of those babies.
Deme Isabelle insisted, with some pride, that he had “his own mind, he does.” Deme Grytt and the Vizier agreed, privately, that Jacen’s mind seemed set on whatever the people around him did not want, unless that someone was Deme Isabelle. She steered her Prince’s desires, and saw to their fulfillment, and because she was his most frequent companion, Jacen grew into insisting on and expecting his own way. By his second birthday, he had learned to throw spectacular tantrums. By his fifth birthday, which was also the fifth year of the War, which had acquired a capital letter and a central importance in public anxiety, the Prince had mastered the fine art of whining. His strategy was simple: produce the most irritating sound, or set of sounds, for as long as was necessary to wear down the opposition and secure whatever it was he wanted.
And what Prince Jacen did not want, at the age of five, was to start his lessons. The Regent-Consort had asked the Vizier to see to her son’s tutelage, as he had seen to Rory’s. The Vizier privately wondered if he had done something to offend his sovereign. Prince Jacen was currently experimenting with pitch and volume, and had achieved a level of both that, if they did not win him the concessions he wanted (an extra piece of pie from the kitchens, a game, the Vizier’s immediate departure), would at least forestall the lesson for some period of time, usually until he ran out of breath.
Jacen enjoyed these battles. The Vizier did not; he was only thankful that Jacen had not discovered straight pins. He made a habit of visiting his first and favorite pupil immediately following his sessions with her brother. It was, in retrospect, unwise, if he meant to keep his ire with the Prince a secret. Because of course when she saw him, Rory knew something was amiss. And of course when she asked him, his perfunctory fine rang loudly to her ears as your wretched brother.
Rory herself harbored no illusions about her brother’s character. She knew she was supposed to love him, and she tried; but she had, by this point, quite given up on trying to like him. She entertained a vague hope she might grow into it, but she found it hard to forgive the effect he had on the people dearest to her. Grytt and the Vizier were made actively miserable by him, while her mother, who held a solid third in her affections, was the only one who appeared to bear any real fondness for him. Jacen’s deleterious effect was clearest on the Vizier, whose years as chief and much needed advisor to the Regent-Consort were already threading his hair grey at the temples and carving lines around his mouth and eyes that did not come from smiling.
To see those lines deepen, and know Jacen was at fault, made Rory angry. Because the fairies had given her kindness, however, and because she had not yet learned to rely on violence as a recourse, she sought to repair the defects in her brother’s character.
She understood multiverse theory quite well, for a girl of twelve. Thus, she knew that anything is possible. Her miscalculation lay in her assumption that the possible and the probable are closely related, and in the underlying cause of Jacen’s shortcomings.
Jacen had never had a Naming, and thus had never gotten gifts of good character from the fairies. Therefore, a Naming would set him right.
Once convinced of a course of action, Rory was unshakeable. Ordinarily, the Vizier would have found her tenacity endearing. It was, after all, the same trait she brought to bear on arithmantic theory and alchemical formulas, and it made her a joy to teach. It was also the same trait she employed when learning to scale the garden walls and climb around the rooftops, but that was Grytt’s particular problem, and watching her handle Rory provided the Vizier with much needed amusement.
He suspected Grytt felt much the same, at present. She was in the corner, shoulder turned to most of the room, running a diagnostic on her left wrist and forefinger, cables snaking from multiple points on that limb to a tablet. She looked entirely distracted, but the V
izier knew her better than that by now.
“He needs a Naming,” Rory was saying. “I know it’s late, but if we held one now, the fairies might still come. There’s nothing in the histories that says they wouldn’t.”
“No,” said Messer Rupert, for the ninth time in three days. He had counted. And for the ninth time in three days, he added, “It’s a great deal of work, planning a Naming, and the sad fact is we don’t have time right now, and by we, I mean your mother and myself and whoever else would be inconvenienced by your desire to play dress-up.”
Once, Rory would have retreated from that tone. Folded in on herself a little and apologized and looked actually guilty for upsetting him. The Vizier felt a pang of nostalgia for that child. This Princess, with her chin stuck out, bore little resemblance. He considered changing the subject, which would have been prudent; but because he was short on sleep, and shorter still on patience (and because he suspected Grytt was laughing at him, over there in the corner), the Vizier told the rest of the reasons behind his refusal.
“As I told you before, your Highness, there is no tradition of Naming Princes. It has nothing to do with being unfair. It does not mean that fairies don’t like boys. It only means that Princes do not need fairy gifts.”
He realized, a heartbeat too late, what he’d said, and then it was too late.
Rory pounced. “And a Princess does? Why?”
The Vizier exhaled hard through his nose. Not a snort, which would have meant amusement, but a hard blast like a steam-valve or a teapot on the edge of boiling. His lips were very thin and slightly white on the edges. His eyes were red-rimmed and red-shot and, as a result, extremely green. He flung that viridian stare past Rory.
“Deme Grytt.” And when she did not favor him with her attention, “Grytt. Would you please explain to her Highness why it is we did not, and will not, have a Naming for her brother?”
Grytt tapped pause on the screen, arresting the unfolding graph and crimson spill of numbers. Her remaining organic eye rolled one complete, exasperated revolution before settling into the edge of its socket nearest the Vizier. She also blew air through her nose, though far less forcefully.
“I think that Rupert’s right, although it’s got nothing to do with tradition. It’s too late to Name your brother because the point of fairy gifts is to imprint them on the impressionable. I fear the Prince has already chosen his path through life.”
Rory threw her hands up. “He’s five, Grytt.”
“Yes. And he’s already a little tyrant.”
Rory threaded her arms across her chest. “That isn’t the real reason. I can tell.”
Grytt hoisted her eyebrow. “That certainly is a reason, and it’s just as real as the other.” She held up her left forefinger in what would have been an arresting and dramatic gesture, except for the cables dangling from the other three fingers and thumb. “Let me finish, young miss, I’ll get to it.”
Rory knew Grytt only ever used young miss when she was annoyed. Young miss meant you hush and listen, dammit—because Grytt thought in swear words, sometimes, so clearly that Rory could hear them.
Grytt set the tablet aside. She turned both eyes on Rory, artificial and flesh, cold blue and warm brown.
“Boys don’t need fairy gifts, because boys are supposed to be kings. No one cares if a king is pretty. People probably should care if he’s kind, but they don’t. He’s supposed to run things. But you—your job is to make him happy and to make his people love you. That’s easier if you’re pretty and nice. All that business the fairies gave you, that’s to make your life easier. Any princess who isn’t those things will have a rough go.”
Dead and sudden silence, as if the world had turned to void.
The Vizier wished very much for a pin. A large pin. Perhaps a foot in length, that he might use to skewer Grytt’s tongue to the table. At least Rory, for once, had nothing to say. Her mouth and eyes competed to see which could be wider and rounder and more surprised.
“My mother,” she squeaked finally.
“Is not a princess, because the Kreshti don’t have princesses. But even not-princesses must make political alliances. Do you think her life would be easier if she were kind, sweet, and did what she was told?”
Rory made a little strangled noise in the back of her throat.
Grytt nodded, a little sadly. Then she turned her stare onto the Vizier and tucked one side of her mouth into a wry smirk that said, That’s the last we’ll hear of a Naming, then.
But it wasn’t.
* * *
• • •
It is one of history’s little ironies that the Prince did end up getting a Naming, although not the sort that Rory or Grytt might have wished for. It is an even greater irony that the Vizier did not anticipate it: it was, after all, his job to know the homeworld traditions and history, which includes obscure bits of custom that become even more obscure bits of law.
Historians might excuse him: the Vizier had been distracted with more immediate concerns. The War, of course and most obviously. The logistics of waging the War largely fell to the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Commerce, and through them the generals and the merchant fleets and supply lines; but the influx of refugees, the stress of maintaining a wartime economy, and the Free Worlds’ alarming proclivity for experimental battle-hexes, ensured that all the Ministers had plenty to occupy them. The Vizier was too wise to meddle in the business of the other ministries; he kept his interaction limited to oversight, requiring frequent reports and briefings, which he then read, collated, absorbed, and discussed with the Regent-Consort long after the official meetings were over. If the other Ministers resented the Vizier’s place in the Regent-Consort’s regard, they never complained. It meant that they were spared the burden of the endless cycle of finding, hiring, and replacing tutors for Prince Jacen.
* * *
• • •
So when the Vizier received a summons, late one evening, to the Regent-Consort’s presence, he was not surprised. The War did not respect anyone’s schedule. The venue, however—the Regent-Consort’s office, in the business wing—did surprise him; for although the Regent-Consort often conducted business late, after dinner with her children, she usually did so from the comfort of her apartments. He supposed that there had been another wave of salacious gossip about their relationship, which, until it died down again, would necessitate several weeks of trekking across the palace at all hours, as well as a suspension of less official association to which Samur’s personal quarters were well-suited.
The Vizier passed the evening shift of servants, polishing the floors and defending the old-style 2D portraits from imaginary dust. The sconces flickered with tesla-hex flames, cold and beautiful and guaranteed not to drip wax. He allowed himself a moment to imagine what it must have been like, on the homeworld, when the world was lit by candles, and the night was something to be feared. He made a note to himself to share that with the Regent-Consort—she liked that kind of discussion—perhaps when they finished whatever business she had discovered at this hour. He speculated that it was a general’s report on the dispensation of Free World battle fleets, and hoped it was not more bad news out of Kreshti. It seemed as if there might be large-scale crop failure on the northern continent, a blight that no one had seen before. Thorne botanists and arithmancers had been dispatched. But they would not even have arrived yet, so it would be too soon for their report.
The office door whisked aside, sensing the Vizier’s aura while he was still two strides away and admitting him automatically. He crossed the threshold as he had a dozen times already today, brain busy with the War, eyes only half-focused on the well-worn path across the carpet, until his gaze snagged on several dots of bright color, and his heart took a sudden plunge into his belly.
The original Kreshti fern was still in its accustomed place on the Regent-Consort’s desk. Several of its daughter-f
erns also lived in the office: a pair sharing space on the window sill, another tucked between the printer and the quantum-hex viewing globe, a fourth balanced in a wall sconce whose tesla-hex fixture had been removed. At the moment, they were all a vivid orange, making the room look as if an exuberant five-year-old with a large brush had come in and rendered the walls polka-dot.
It would have been a charming effect, had the Vizier not known that orange meant a state of high agitation. Ordinarily, he would have been glad of the ferns’ forewarning. The Regent-Consort was legendary, among a staff long accustomed to the Old King, for maintaining her composure. But today, she was standing at the window, staring outward. In daylight, the view of the grounds would have been lovely. At night, the ambient interior light rendered the window a mirror, which meant that as the Vizier entered, the Regent-Consort did not have to turn around to glare at him.
It also meant he could not sneak back out and flee down the hallway. He stopped, instead, as the door snicked closed behind him.
“Your Grace?” It did not seem like a Samur sort of visit.
The Regent-Consort did not correct him, which confirmed his suspicion. Instead, she spun on her heel. She marched to the desk, leaned across it, and shoved a tablet down its length, narrowly missing the fern and the terminal. The tablet shot between a pair of 2Ds, one of the Princess and one of the Prince (who could not share a frame happily, and could indeed scarcely tolerate each other on the wide expanse of the desk). In its Regent-propelled rush, the tablet skidded past Prince Jacen’s 2D and caught the far corner of Princess Rory’s frame, spinning the 2D so that she, and her mother, stared at the Vizier. Of the pair, at least Rory was smiling.
The tablet stopped, finally, a finger’s width from the edge of the desk. The Vizier met it there, approaching with caution. The screen showed a great many lines of small, officious print, stacking into columns and punctuated with florid headings meant to imitate handwritten script. It looked official and unpleasant.