by K. Eason
“Read it,” the Regent-Consort said, unnecessarily. She folded her arms hard across her middle, as if she meant to test the sturdiness of her ribs. The ferns on the desk trended crimson nearest their stems.
The Vizier did so. The small, officious print proved itself to be a legal codex: both unpleasant, and, from the clues left by syntax and phrasing, quite old, from a time when codices were hand-scripted on vellum and the stars were merely lights in the sky.
“Oh,” the Vizier said, when he had finished. “Oh, dear.”
The Regent-Consort made a little growling noise in the back of her throat. “Rupert. Tell me this isn’t real. Tell me it’s nonsense.”
“It is nonsense, your Grace. But it does appear genuine. Where did you find it?”
“I did not find it. The Minister of the Interior brought it to my attention today. Which is to say, he ambushed me in a corridor with a list of potential husbands for my daughter. He had them arranged by political usefulness, liquid wealth, and raw planetary resources. When I told him I had given no thought to marrying my thirteen-year-old daughter to anyone, as she would be Queen someday, he showed me this. He was smirking, Rupert. Smirking.”
The Vizier very carefully did not look at her. “I am very, very sorry, your Grace. I regret to admit I did not know about this particular provision.”
“Bah.” She waved her hand, dismissing the tablet and its archaic codex. The ferns shivered ever so slightly toward aubergine. The Regent-Consort rearranged her face into its habitual composure. The Vizier, who knew her very well, marked the cracks around her eyes, her mouth, in the faint breathlessness of her voice. “It can’t be legal, Rupert. The Thorne Consortium has non-discrimination policies for both employment and contracts. Why would succession be any different?”
“Because there have been no girls born to the line since the Thornes founded it. Laws are rarely changed, your Grace, without an immediate and obvious need.”
“Well, there’s an immediate and obvious need right now.”
“No. There is not. You have a son. You remain Regent-Consort, but now you rule for Prince Jacen. If you attempt to change this law now, you will be seen as—” He hesitated. Winced. The fern nearest him drooped and turned chartreuse.
Her eyes were hard and cool. “Kreshti. Foreign. Outsider. Disgracing my husband’s memory and shaming his ancestors. Is that about right?”
The Vizier nodded, miserable. “You would also be perceived as playing favorites between your children and, ah, Prince Jacen is quite popular among the people.”
“More popular than Rory.”
Because they do not know him, the Vizier did not say. And they do not know her.
The Regent-Consort said it for him, with a mother’s anguish. “Because they have transferred their affection for Philip onto him, knowing nothing of him other than he looks like his father, and that Rory looks like me.” She turned away, abandoning all pretense of detachment. “It’s a stupid law!”
The Vizier had to agree. But the legal provisions in the antique codex were clear: the throne would pass to the eldest son and the heirs of his body, before it could come to Rory Thorne.
And so, on the eve of his sixth birthday, the age at which boys were deemed sturdy enough to begin bearing the burden of kingship, Jacen Thorne was officially named the Crown Prince, and traded the honorific your Highness for your Majesty.
This did not in any way improve his tendency toward tyranny.
CHAPTER SIX
Check
Rory Thorne, thus demoted from heir to merely princess, did not notice any particular difference in her daily routines. She still had lessons with her tutors and lessons with her battle-master (the name she and Grytt agreed upon as more impressive than body-maid). She had meals with her mother, avoided her brother, and made long, introspective retreats to the koi pond. The holidays and public events marched on in their cycle, and she evolved from mere decoration—a child in satin and velvet, perched on a chair beside her brother—to active participant. Still stuffed into satin and velvet, she was expected to mingle with the guests. To smile, and laugh, and
perform like a trained tree-rat
converse with an audience whose judgment was both fickle in its result and certain in its rendering.
Rory developed a sincere appreciation for the effectiveness of a full-sized homeworld harp as a shield against undesirable interpersonal contact. Performance gave her audience an objective and impersonal framework by which they might judge her: What a lovely rendition of Mzambe’s Third Invention, what a strange interpretation of Kinzi’s Fugue No. 100, oh, I simply do not like or understand k’bal music. Thus did the most apparently useless of her fairy blessings manifest utility.
The Princess, by virtue of her position—as a minor, as royalty—did not see the grinding consequences of the War in her daily life, except in the steady invasion of silver through her mother’s black hair and the Vizier’s gradual transformation from slender to gaunt. The battles never came within a tesser-hex of her home system. There were no near-orbit bombardments, or fuel rationing, or famine; and the palace censors were careful to screen the video feeds to the royal children’s chamber terminals.
Rory was clever enough—thanks to the Vizier’s tutelage with arithmancy—to bypass the censorship. Her experience of the War, as it cycled through two more long years, came from the public ’casts, alternatively lurid and sensational, sober and thoughtful. She watched in secret, huddled under her blanket with Grytt’s tablet in the small hours of the night, until Grytt caught her one evening and instituted a new practice: they would watch the ’casts together, so that Rory could ask questions when she had them.
Grytt was not privy to more official documents, however, as those were classified and protected behind a hedge of crypto-hexes. So Rory, determined to acquire those answers, continued to build on the Vizier’s lessons, until one day, after several hours on the hard plascrete bench beside the koi pond, she cracked the Vizier’s encryption and hexed her own backdoor into his files. Were she still Crown Princess, she might have asked for, and received, that access legitimately; but since she was not, she would have needed the Council of Ministers’ approval, and they had already forbidden her to attend their meetings. They cited vague concerns about security: since Rory would someday marry, they told her, that future spouse might, through her, learn the disposition of the Consortium’s military and finances.
What they meant, of course, was you won’t understand anyway, dear and you’re a princess and what does a girl know about war? More galling: they invited Jacen, as Crown Prince, to attend Council sessions, though no one believed he would actually go. Jacen was eight, too impatient for chess and more interested in playing at war in Duty Calls than in doing much of anything else.
So Rory read, from the Vizier’s violated files, the field reports from the generals, the briefings from the new Minister of Espionage, and the ever-growing lists of the dead. She read, and taught herself to understand politics and tactics and strategy, supplemented by discussions with the Vizier (for broad generalities) and with Grytt (for specific details).
Her chess game, to the Vizier’s delight, improved. So did her Duty Calls high score, to her brother’s dismay.
Rory also taught herself to understand wartime economics. Included in the field reports were financial reports and projections, treaties and trade agreements, intricate deals and bargains for munitions, and raw materials, and exclusive trading options. She learned which of the vigorously declared neutral kingdoms, conglomerates, networks, and worlds were genuine in that declaration, and which were making secret deals. She learned that the Thorne Consortium had a long-reaching spy network, and a brave, clever military that won most of its battles. But she also learned that the Thorne Consortium did not have limitless resources and was, in fact, nearly bankrupt. The Free Worlds, with their vaster collection of colonies, were winning as slowl
y and inexorably as the days and weeks of her minority were falling away.
Her sixteenth birthday arrived and departed, with the usual fanfare and several new guests. Men she did not recognize, a Prince and a Count, both from declared neutral kingdoms, and two junior partners from prominent Merchant League families, all of whom had substantial resources. She knew who they were, of course. The Vizier kept good files, and these, he had shared with her.
“So, ah.” His eyes had slid away. “So that you are prepared for your guests.”
But he was thinking damn damn damn as he said it.
Rory hadn’t the heart to interrogate him further. Instead, she read the files and saved her questions for Grytt, who made a face at the list and muttered open season under her breath.
“One of them will be my future husband,” Rory said. “Do we need the Larish shipyards more than we need the Johnson-Thrymbe fortune?”
“If the harvest on Kreshti’s northern continent fails again, we’ll need the fortune.” Grytt’s twisted scar-grimace turned another notch grimmer. “But Kreshti doesn’t have two years until your majority. The ship-builder will be a bigger help to the Thorne fleet.”
“The Council might grant me dispensation to marry early.” Rory was proud of how cool she sounded. She had practiced in front of the mirror, so that her face matched her voice. She knew her brows were level, her mouth relaxed, her eyes half-lidded and thoughtful.
Grytt’s original eye rolled in its socket. “Your mother will never allow it.”
“Mother may not have a choice.”
Grytt brought her mecha hand and her meat hand together on the table, and steepled her fingers in front of her scowl. It was eerily similar to the Regent-Consort’s favorite I’m thinking gesture.
“Always a choice, Rory,” said Grytt. “Sometimes it doesn’t look like much, but there’s always a choice.”
Unbeknownst to Rory, such choices were indeed being made, though not in the manner she would have preferred or predicted.
* * *
• • •
“I have an idea, Rupert, but I want you to tell me what you think.”
The Regent-Consort was sitting behind her desk, elbows bent, forearms flat, fingers woven together. The ferns were all, down to their tiniest fronds, a vivid orange.
The Vizier, seated on the far side of the desk, glanced uneasily at the ferns. Ordinarily, when Samur claimed inspiration, the ferns were blue or violet or, on occasion, a vivid maroon. Their current carroty hue indicated that the Regent-Consort’s idea was one about which she was not happy. And the way she was braced on her desk, as if she must hold it in place lest it cavort about the room, made his stomach knot unhappily around the scraps of his lunch.
He suspected he knew the reason for the orange idea, and both hoped, and did not hope, that it involved what Grytt called an ass-whupping. The Vizier was not by his own nature a violent man. But in this case, he thought he would appreciate watching Grytt (who was quite violent, if permitted) beat the Larish heir and the junior partner from Johnson-Thrymbe five shades of purple. It was not their fault, precisely: they were opportunists who sought occasion to advance their own fortunes, like all of their ilk, and they were willing to join their assets with the Thorne Consortium. That would have been true, War or no.
The problem was that the Thorne Consortium could not afford to offend anyone else in the multiverse, particularly not these two. He truly hoped the Regent-Consort was not going to grant their intolerable, impertinent petitions. Though of the pair, the Larish boy could at least carry on a conversation. He’d read a book or two. The Johnson-Thrymbe junior partner was exactly as sharp as a bag of wet tree-rats.
Perhaps that meant the Regent-Consort had decided to grant his petition. That would be an orange fern-worthy idea. He was glad of the tablet in his lap, so he had something to grip. He wasn’t violent, truly, but he wanted his hands around those young men’s necks—
He realized, abruptly, that his own breath was the loudest sound in the room. The Regent-Consort was watching, waiting patiently for his acknowledgement. He flushed. A faint, sympathetic yellow tinted the nearest fern before the orange overwhelmed it.
“Ah.” The Vizier wanted to hide behind her title, and, by extension, take refuge behind his own. Instead, he made himself sit a little straighter, and said, “All right, Samur. Tell me this idea.”
She let her breath go in a rush. “You’ve seen the proposals from Larish and Johnson-Thrymbe.”
The Vizier blinked and dropped his gaze to his lap, and the tablet, and the list. “I—yes, and I think they’re entirely inappropriate. To suggest that we grant them special legal exemption to bypass Rory’s age of majority—”
“Wait.” Samur held up her hand. “They didn’t seek exemption. Or rather—they did, but both of them did so because my daughter suggested it. And she told them how to file it.”
“She . . . what?”
“Apparently she’s been sending messages. Meeting in secret. Creeping around the koi pond, no doubt, having hexed the security ‘bots to ignore her.”
The Vizier felt his eyes bugging out. “She didn’t meet them in person, did she?”
Samur raised her empty palms skyward in the universal parental gesture of how should I know? “Both Larish and Johnson-Thrymbe seem convinced that Rory is personally interested in them. They were quite smug.”
The Vizier released the tablet from its proxy strangulation and transferred his fingers to his temples. Perhaps, if he pressed firmly enough, he might prevent his brain from bursting out his ears. Perhaps.
“And you are certain this is Rory’s doing?”
“Well, it’s certainly not Grytt’s.”
“No. Though if she’s aware of this, she should know better.” The Vizier began collecting his wits, plucking them from the corners in his brain to which they had fled. “You say they are convinced of Rory’s personal interest—so neither knows about the other, is that it?”
“That is exactly it. She’s playing them, Rupert. They filed their petitions within hours of each other.” Samur’s lips tightened to a monofilament edge. “If there are two petitions, of identical merit, then it falls to the seated monarch to decide which to grant, and which to refuse. Or—bless the barbarity of Philip’s homeworld traditions—I could make them duel for her hand. Do you think that’s what she wants? Boys to fight over her?”
“No. I’m sure that’s not it.” The Vizier studied Samur’s face. He misliked the glassy intensity of her gaze and the brittle edge to her voice. The years since the King’s death had blunted his skills at predicting royal outbursts, but those skills had not withered entirely. There was a royal storm coming unless he headed it off.
And so, as if Samur were the King, and allergic to reason, the Vizier spun his answer out like a thick rope: “I think she expects you to choose Johnson-Thrymbe because he’s got money that we desperately need to buy supplies and to send aid to Kreshti. That might offend the senior Larish, and cost us the shipyards, except that there are half a dozen Larish daughters, and you still have a son. Offer Larish the promise of that future alliance, and you would secure their shipyards now anyway. Rory, meanwhile, brings in the Johnson-Thrymbe fortune. The only wounded ego in all of this would be the Larish heir, and he’s too arrogant to dwell on it for long.”
Samur’s eyes narrowed. “Is my daughter that clever? Have you made her that clever, Rupert?”
The fronds of the ferns closest to the Vizier blanched almost as white as he did. “You don’t think I suggested this to her! Samur!”
The ferns shivered green, for just a heartbeat. Then Samur took a deep, shaky breath. “No. Of course you didn’t. I just mean—she’s been a good student. Too good. I think you’re right. And I think she actually expects me to go along with this.”
The Vizier imagined a rumbling of thunder, and the roiling darkness of clouds
above Samur’s head, and threads of white lightning. He felt as if he were holding a metal rod up to the sky, daring disaster, and still he asked,
“But you won’t, will you?”
“Well. I was thinking, I might make my own proposal.” Samur paused. In anyone else that pause would have been deliberate drama, meant to force the audience to ask the obvious question, what proposal?
The Vizier found his mouth too dry, and his jaw too clenched, to manage. He made a little noise in the back of his throat, instead, and nodded go on, I’m listening.
“Regent Moss is fond of power. I plan to offer that to him, in return for a cease-fire. Look.” She swiveled her screen to face him. “I’ve drafted a treaty. A letter. I’m not sure. An offer, certainly. It needs the legal, formal language.” A breathless laugh rattled in the back of her throat. “I think I’ve been too forward in my phrasing.”
The Vizier found himself leaning toward the screen, his eyes drawn to the words as surely as planets orbit a star. He could no more refrain from reading an offered document than he could refrain from breathing. But a page into it, he did forget to breathe. And by the end, he wished he might unread it, among a hundred other unvoiced wishes.
The Regent-Consort was an educated woman, but she lacked the artifice of a courtier. Her proposal stood as bald and comfortless as the blasted hulks of starships littering Kreshti’s sky. The Vizier read it twice. Then he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes a little bit longer than a proper blink. He opened them to find the Regent-Consort’s anxious gaze pulling at him like fingers.
“What do you think?”
“Your aunt will hate it. And you, I think, for suggesting it. It’s been an unspoken assumption that Moss was behind the assassinations of both kings. You said as much to your aunt when this war started. To sue him for peace is, well. She will see that as dishonorable. To marry him to sweeten the offer, she will see as obscene.”