by K. Eason
There were fifteen separate, egregious breaches of etiquette in that statement. Rory drew as much breath as the bodice would permit, half to settle her wits, half to fuel the stinging rebuke she meant to deliver. But the little bone blade, its sharp edges unimpressed by Grytt’s stitching or the sturdiness of its sheath, and quite put out by all the curtseys, took the opportunity to part both the leather and the very first layer of flesh just above Rory’s navel.
It was not a very great discomfort, but it was startling, and it was exactly enough to divert Rory from her planned outburst and channel her into a much more succinct utterance.
“Oh, shut up,” she snapped, and Jaed was startled enough to do just that, which left Rory a few moments to ponder the reasons for her distress.
The fairies may have neglected Rory’s wisdom, but they had not stinted her intellect. And what she had concluded was this: that this unfortunate boy-man wasn’t Prince Ivar at all.
* * *
• • •
She wasted no time in reporting that, at the end of the dinner, having spent two full hours in proximity to the man in question, and thus being quite certain of her conviction.
“I’m telling you, it’s not Ivar.”
It was the fourth time Rory had said as much, in the space of thrice that many minutes. The Vizier cast the same sort of look at Grytt as a man might at a sturdy tree with sturdy branches hanging over a raging river, in which there was exactly one slippery rock to which said man clung, desperately, while the current tore at him.
Grytt only cocked her eyebrow at him, those sturdy branches waving just out of reach.
The Vizier sighed. “Yes, Rory, so you have said.”
“Well, what are we going to do about it?”
Rory folded her arms in a most alarming imitation of a five-year-old. The Vizier felt the first stirrings of a headache. He probed carefully the borderland between eyebrow and flesh along his eyesockets. The Princess was not given to flights of fancy. That she was disappointed in her betrothed was understandable—the boy was a bit of a mess—but her reaction was entirely out of proportion.
“Rory. Listen. I understand that Ivar is perhaps not what you had hoped for—”
“Oh hell, Messer Rupert.” The Princess, having been freed from the twin confines of bodice and public observation, tossed her arms toward what would have been skyward, in a place with a sky, and sent her gaze after them. It was very much her mother’s gesture; but while Samur often followed such gestures with entreaties to her family’s ancestors and the old gods of Kreshti, Rory only made frustrated noises at the impervious steel plates.
It was just as well, the Vizier thought, that the daughter did not share the mother’s faith. If the Kreshti ancestors or their gods were lurking and listening in the maintenance tunnels between decks, then Rory would be disappointed in their impotence. The Vizier knew that all too well. He had burned incense and lit candles to every god still worshipped in Thorne, and a few besides, including the old Kreshti gods, and still, his Princess was here, awaiting marriage to a man so odious to her that she had regressed to childish fancy to excuse it.
“Messer Rupert. Are you even listening to me?”
He was not, as it happened. He debated the wisdom of saying as much, and had reached the conclusion that yes, he might be permitted a display of irritation, when Rory spoke again.
“That’s. Not. Ivar. He had no idea who I was. None.” Her eyes bored into him, bright as the power indicators on Grytt’s ’slinger. Full charge.
Messer Rupert rubbed his forehead again. His hands, perpetually chilled here on Urse, granted some small measure of relief from the thump on the other side of his skull. “Perhaps he simply did not recognize you,” he said carefully. “It has been a great many years.”
“You don’t even believe that. You think maybe he’s stupid. And maybe he is. But even if he never checked a holo or a 2D, he should remember me. And he didn’t. Not my face, not my name. Nothing. Messer Rupert. How could that be?” Rory crossed the floor—princesses did not stomp, or that is exactly what she would have been doing—and stopped in front of him. He pretended not to notice her impatient feet, and continued to massage his forehead.
“The last time Ivar saw you, his father died in an explosion. Perhaps he has repressed the memory.”
“I didn’t.” The feet shuffled, then stilled. A shadow darkened the Vizier’s already limited field of vision as Rory leaned down, putting their faces on a level.
“This Ivar’s a fake. An imposter. Moss is . . . I don’t know. Passing him off. Keeping the real one prisoner somewhere.”
The Vizier looked at her from within the cool frame of his hands. He fancied he could feel the headache pushing against his fingers. “Do you have any idea how fantastic that sounds?”
Rory’s already stubborn chin thrust out a little further. “I do know. But I’m serious. It’s not wishful thinking, it’s not me being upset that this Ivar’s a, a—”
“Dullard? Because I find that somewhat upsetting, myself.” Rupert sat up, bringing his face out of the plane it shared with Rory’s, forcing her to stand up and step back. “I had hoped this boy would have grown into a worthier man. I am disappointed. As are you, Rory. But that does not therefore mean this Ivar is an imposter.”
“The fairy gift made it pretty damn clear he is!”
“The fairy gift. Rory, honestly.” The Vizier fired a glare past his Princess’s left hip. “Don’t you have anything helpful to say?”
Grytt, who had been rubbing at a spot on the kitchen counter with more vigor and intensity than any stain deserved, left off her labors with an expression somewhere between grimace and grin. “We all saw the fairies. And the girl’s got a gift for seeing through nonsense. Admit that.”
“I’m standing right here,” said Rory.
The Vizier ignored her. “So you think Ivar’s an imposter, too?”
Grytt shrugged and leaned back against the counter. Her fingers, flesh and metal, curled around the edge. The Vizier hoped she was not leaning half as hard as she appeared to be; she was not a large woman, but the implants made her heavier than she appeared, and the mecha hand was more than a match for the plastics that comprised station furnishings.
“The prince I remember wasn’t much, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’m saying, it’s damn convenient for Moss, that the heir’s a bit of a mess. Makes it easier for his boys, if he does grab for power. No one’s going to miss Ivar.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Rory, please. Don’t crow. It’s unbecoming. And loud.”
“Sorry, Messer Rupert.”
She was, too. That was genuine regret on her face, and guilt, because Rory Thorne, in addition to being gifted in ascertaining social truths, was also relentlessly kind. And whether that kindness came from the fairies—whose reality the Vizier doubted, sometimes, despite the evidence of memory (his, Grytt’s, Samur’s)—or whether it was native to Rory herself, well, the result was a young woman of whom the Vizier was very fond, who did not deserve the troglodytic Prince to whom she was bound, and who, despite her distress, was sincerely sorry to have upset him.
The Vizier found himself angry at the rules and customs that shaped the world in which he moved. He found himself wishing that, just this once, the most unlikely and fantastic explanation was the true one, and that he could spare Rory a betrothal that, unwelcome before, had become intolerable.
And suddenly, he realized that he could—if not spare her, at least try. But he was the Vizier, whose task and talent was offering advice, and guiding kings and regent-consorts and princesses into making the best decisions available—oh. Well then.
He caught Rory’s gaze. “If you are certain, Rory, that the young man is not Ivar, then what would you suggest that we do about it?”
Rory blinked, and some of her certainty drained away. “Do?”
“Surely,” Rupert went on, “you are not making much of this fact for the sheer joy of hearing yourself complain. Nor, I presume, are you doing it under the expectation that Grytt and I will figure out how to fix it for you.”
A man of lesser quality, dealing with a girl of lesser quality, might have been hoping to discourage Rory by issuing such a challenge. The Vizier, however, knew his princess very well, and he knew how she responded to complications.
“If,” said Rory, after a moment, “if there were a plot to conceal the true Prince, if Moss hasn’t just killed him outright—but Messer Rupert, what if he has?”
Rupert cocked his head. “He may have. But the fact remains, Rory, you believe we do not know the truth of Ivar’s situation, whatever it is.”
“I—yes. True. All right.” Rory’s eyes narrowed. They skipped away from the Vizier’s face, wandering instead across that ghastly striped planet that was even now swelling in the porthole, rusty in its radiance. “I think such information would be hidden, obviously; but it couldn’t be totally secret. There would need to be a conspiracy of some kind. One man couldn’t do it alone. And they couldn’t be keeping him here. But if they’re keeping him elsewhere, there must be . . . I don’t know. Records. Evidence.” She paused. The planet striped her face with glowing bands of rust and sienna and, if a man were superstitious, blood.
“Communications would have to go through the quantum relays unless they were on actual paper and carried by courier.”
Grytt grunted. “So we need to find this courier.”
“No. Well. I don’t think there is one.” Rory turned back to her body-maid and grinned. “Paper is immune to hexing, but it’s fragile and expensive and it takes up a lot of space. A courier would be less secure than just erasing the data on a local system, too, because they could be intercepted or killed. So I think any secret information will be in the turing collective somewhere. And even if it’s been erased, that doesn’t matter. Data’s never really gone. There’s always a ghost. A really good arithmancer can find the ghosts and reconstruct the information.”
“Huh,” said Grytt. “You that good, Rory?”
“Not me. Messer Rupert.” She turned to face him, finally. “That’s my proposal. That you hex the turing and find out what’s happened to Ivar. And then, once we know that, we can decide what to do next. Will you do that?”
The Vizier thought about the ways in which this endeavor could go extremely wrong: miskeyed hexes, arithmancers more clever than he, Valenko’s dead queen, and accidents, and how very far Urse was from Thorne. He thought about how very many things could happen to a man, even a diplomat, even a vizier, so far from home.
Then he looked at Rory, and imagined a future in which she married the man he’d met in the arboretum, and he said, “Yes.”
CHAPTER TEN
In Which Things That Can Go Wrong, Do
There is no consensus, among arithmancers or people who write about arithmancy, exactly how best to describe it. An art, say the more romantic. A science, say the practical. The most succinct explanation, and the one most popularly repeated, came from a k’bal arithmancer named Ptt’nikki, who recorded the Arias (now considered the foundation for the art school of arithmancy) before the Vizier’s ancestors had quite figured out fire. In the Arias, which function more like a series of fables than a treatise, there is a tale in which the universe acquires a gender and misplaces her chastity and, in her quest to recover it, acquires some of the more basic arithmantic principles. Although the translation is not entirely accurate, since k’bal do not have fixed characteristics linked to their four genders and three sexes, the popularity of the tale suggests that there is, among arithmancers, a sense that one is conversing with a universe that has an opinion, and that if one wants to succeed at arithmancy, one should employ a degree of flattery, trickery, or raw talent.
The mirri word for arithmancy translates simply as magic, which, while counted superstition by everyone else, seems to suit the mirri just fine.
The Vizier belonged to the more scientific of the arithmantic camps. He regarded the universe as a puzzle to which he had, if not the ultimate solution, at least an accurate and detailed set of instructions for solving. And besides, he had more than a passing familiarity with the Ursan turing’s collective, having hexed through its defenses once before, during King Sergei’s funeral. He had, at that time, laid down some backdoors, arithmantic hatches worked into the turing’s code against the eventual necessity of his return. He congratulated himself, as much as a man of the Vizier’s modesty ever does, on his foresight and on his memory, for recalling the precise placement and arrangement of his hexes.
Unbeknownst to the Vizier, the turing’s collective also remembered him.
* * *
• • •
Rory was not surprised when the Vizier settled himself behind the primary console and got to work at once, almost before the echoes of his affirmation had faded. She was surprised, however, to find him still hunched over the console the following morning, chin on one hand, while the other pecked irritably at the keyboard. His eyebrows had drawn together, wrinkling the skin between them into valleys and peaks of concentration. His cheeks seemed more hollow than usual, the lines around his eyes much deeper. His gaze did not even flicker as she came into the room. She watched, for a minute, to be sure that he blinked.
He did, but not often. Rory frowned. “You should,” she began, but Grytt touched her shoulder.
“Let him work,” she said. “You know how he gets.”
“Hungry,” said Rory. “And dehydrated.”
“And grumpy,” agreed Grytt. She eyed the Vizier with something like approval. “He’s fine.”
“Huh,” said Rory, and performed her own hex, simple and tiny and unobtrusive, shifting her perception just a little bit, so that she could see the aura emanations in the aether. True to Grytt’s prediction, Messer Rupert was indeed fine, although his orange band was brighter than usual, and the red more intense.
“He’s worried,” said Rory. “And . . . angry. I think. Or strongly annoyed.”
“Right. Like I said. He’s fine.”
Rory rolled her eyes. “Well then. I think I’ll just go take a walk around the station today. Visit the embassy. Wander the arboretum.”
Grytt stopped smiling. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. Actually, I am.” Rory paced the length of the room. Once. Twice. She paused on the far end, pressing her back against the wall. “Last night marked my formal introduction, didn’t it? Everyone officially knows I’m here. So there’s no need for me to stay locked up in here like a mirri during estrus.”
Grytt snorted. “You’re just testing him now, aren’t you? See if he’ll hear you and sputter a bit?”
“Maybe.” Rory frowned. “But that does raise a question. Do you think we need to stay with him? I mean, can we leave him alone?”
Grytt studied the Princess a moment, and considered how easy it was to forget how old she was, and that young women of her temperament did not do well in confinement. The history of her father’s homeworld was testament to that. Grytt did not blame the fairies, particularly, for having skimped on Rory’s patience. Grytt had seen the fairies, to be sure, but she did not accord them the same regard as Rupert or Samur. They were people. They had some pretty impressive tricks. Good for them. Rory’s impatience was more easily explained as Samur’s daughter and sixteen than any oversight on the part of xeno guests. She was worried, she was bored, and that made a bad combination, by Grytt’s reckoning. She was certain the Vizier would agree.
“We don’t have to stay here with him, but someone does. And don’t think about assigning that job to me either, Princess. Waste of time, leaving me here. I can have our people on the door. Thorsdottir and Zhang, maybe. It’s junior work. They can make sure no one comes in and finds him like this. If he does manage to remember to eat, he can
manage on his own.”
“Excellent.” Rory powered up her tablet and logged into the network, trying not to look as relieved as she felt. “I’ll tell the embassy we’re coming.”
* * *
• • •
They returned just before the dinner hour. The suite was unlit by anything other than Cherno’s rusty glow, and as a result, mostly composed of the ominous shapes that familiar furnishings wear in the dark. Messer Rupert was still hunched in front of the turing. His right hand lay sprawled across the keys. Every few seconds, his fingers would move. His eyes had screwed into slits, dry and miserable behind the outraged puffiness of his eyelids.
A muscle in his jaw ticked in time to his heartbeat.
There was a cup in the sink with a dark, congealed puddle at the bottom, and rings of the same color dotting the counters, proof that Messer Rupert had moved during the day.
Grytt made a noise in her throat and fetched a rag.
Rory folded her arms and stared at Messer Rupert. She wanted to tell him about her day: the meticulous tour of the embassies, while messages sizzled through the aether, office to office, until the Tadeshi Minister of Entertainment arrived and requested an audience with her. She wanted to tell him about holding that impromptu meeting there in his office, playing princess, negotiating and flattering and, when those failed, bullying her way into a more complete tour of the station, and access for herself and Grytt to the private gym where the highest-ranking citizens took their exercise. She wanted to say, “I had to throw a bit of a fit, Messer Rupert. They didn’t want to grant permission for Grytt. I had to say she protects my virtue. I thought she’d laugh outright, but she didn’t, and I made them agree.”
And she wanted to ask him, in a very soft voice, so that Grytt could pretend not to hear: “Did I do okay?”
Instead, she touched Messer Rupert’s arm, very gently, and sighed, and went into the kitchen to make a curry.