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

by K. Eason

  The title, rather than the tone, struck Rory like a small sack of stones. The Princess turned, yielding up a meter of space, and Grytt moved into that gap as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Thorsdottir’s arm dropped, and Grytt found herself chest to chest—or rather, chin to chest, as she did not possess Thorsdottir’s prodigious height—with Senior Toady. She squinted her living eye at his uniform as if inspecting for lint.

  “I need to see your orders . . . Lieutenant. Before I will even consider permitting you to take the Vizier into custody.”

  Rory let out a tiny gasp. Grytt braced for an argument, for a counter order, for a scene of such drama that ’cast writers from five systems would request the security footage for inspiration for the next generation of entertainment programming.

  Then she heard the Princess’s teeth grind together, and the moment passed. Grytt wondered if Rupert had whispered something to her, or whether Rory was just saving up for a spectacular outburst.

  Senior Toady, oblivious to the nearness of his miss, twitched a little, whether from revulsion (Grytt wore her best ugly scowl) or apprehension (she was within easy reach of his person and his sidearm), Grytt could not guess. She did know he could not retreat any further without stepping on his own men. They worried her more: five hands hovering over their ’slingers with an eagerness which suggested they were not just ready for action, they were expecting it.

  Grytt was no arithmancer. She could not read auras. But her metal eye had a web of hexes that welded it to her flesh and her nerves, and it provided information a plain, human eye couldn’t. Right now, it was displaying thin translucent cyan lines plotted over the standard visual input, probable trajectories for ’slinger bolts fired from each of the Tadeshi, to their most likely targets.

  Grytt did not like what she saw.

  “Orders,” Grytt snapped. “Surely you have them.”

  “I. Yes.” Senior Toady retained enough wit to raise his left hand in a wait and hold gesture. The other five retained enough discipline to freeze exactly in place while he fished into his breastplate with his right hand and produced a wafer-slim, flexible tablet.

  Grytt made a great show of reading it over, although she got little more than the Vizier’s name and title prominently displayed at the top, and Regent Moss’s name, title, and elaborate signature at the bottom, and a great morass of Tadeshi legalese in between. The ancestors and Rupert might understand it; Grytt could only hope Rory could figure it out, given time.

  She rolled the tablet into a tube, tight as the plastic would permit. “Thank you,” she said. “Lieutenant—what’s your name?”

  He blinked. “Malvar.”

  “Malvar.” She made a face as if the name tasted bad. “Fine. We’ll expect you to treat the Vizier with every possible courtesy, you hear me? Because this”—and she pointed the rolled tablet at his face like an angry finger—“this is someone’s very serious mistake, for which the Princess and the Vizier will expect a very serious apology. A personal apology, Lieutenant.”

  Senior Toady Malvar jerked his chin down in what might have been a nod, if every cord on his neck had not been standing out like steel cables. Then he broke stares with Grytt.

  “Lord Vizier,” he said. “If you will come with me.”

  There was a shuffle behind Grytt that sounded like a tall, slight man trying to come forward, and a significantly smaller and more athletic young woman perhaps holding his sleeve or otherwise impeding his progress.

  “It’s all right,” Rupert said quietly. And added, “Princess.”

  Then he brushed by Grytt, glancing down as he did so. She marked the pulse beating in his throat, and the beads of sweat on his lip. And she saw the message that flashed across her metal eye, hexed there by an arithmancer trying to walk, surrender, and hex at the same time. It was not up to Rupert’s usual eloquence, but the sentiment was clear.

  Grytt nodded, to show him she understood. And then he was past her, and past Thorsdottir’s broad-shouldered perimeter, and surrounded by Tadeshi uniforms.

  “Tell the Regent,” said Rory in a brittle, spiky voice, “that we are displeased with this action. Tell him that we will expect an explanation immediately, Lieutenant Malvar. Do you hear me?”

  “Your Highness,” said Malvar, and bowed a little more than the requisite angle. He seemed quite happy now to retreat, leaving the embassy doors unobstructed.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was a long walk from those embassy doors, through the gathering knot of distressed embassy personnel, through a small labyrinth of embassy corridors. The Vizier’s office lay at the end of the main floor corridor, beside a tiny arboretum with a slender little copse of Thorne-native trees, hexed within a centimeter of their genome to survive in the canned air and cold light of Urse.

  Rory waited until the office door whisked shut before she said, “Grytt,” in a voice that immediately filled the room, crowding into corners and the gaps in the decking, snatching every scrap of warmth and replacing it with a chill more profound than deep aether. Her mouth worked around what she meant to say next, trying on half a dozen demands, exclamations, and accusations.

  Grytt watched as how dare you and what the hell were you thinking and what have you done tried, and failed, to be the first words out Rory’s mouth. She was mildly surprised when Rory turned instead to Thorsdottir and Zhang.

  “Out,” she said.

  “Stay,” said Grytt. “You’re going to yell at me, they can hear it.”

  “I was going to yell at all of you, but it’s not their fault. It’s yours.”

  Thorsdottir looked at Zhang, who looked at Grytt, who grimaced. “If you mean they followed my orders, then yes.”

  “I don’t need guards who follow your orders, I need guards who follow mine.”

  Thorsdottir’s cheeks reddened. Zhang flinched. Grytt wished the damned fairies had given Rory a blessing about think-before-speaking. But even fairy gifts might be powerless before teenage tempers.

  Grytt, however, was not. “And you’d’ve ordered what, Princess? That we fight back? Say we had. Then what? A firefight in front of our embassy, three on six.”

  “Moss’s men would have stood down.” But Rory did not look so certain, now. Her brows crowded together. “They wouldn’t have risked me.”

  “No. Not you. They’re good enough to miss you completely. But Rupert, now. You think a bolt in his skull wouldn’t solve a few of Moss’s problems? So sorry, Princess, we didn’t mean to kill him. Firefight. Accident. This way, he’s alive and unhurt.”

  Rory’s face resembled a Kantarin deathmask, gone smooth and blank. Only her eyes flickered, like a tesla with a short in the wire. “And a prisoner.”

  “Alive,” Grytt repeated. “Which he wouldn’t be, if you’d got your way. Or your guards, either. I’m half metal. Hard to kill. But Thorsdottir and Zhang have all their original parts. Best for you, and for them, if they keep them.”

  Rory said nothing.

  Grytt blew her anger away in a gale-force sigh. “Listen. Moss set you up. That lieutenant wasn’t any diplomat. He was greener than five-week-old cheese left in the sun. He was supposed to provoke you. And me, I imagine.”

  “It worked.”

  “It did. It would’ve worked better if you’d gotten your way and started a fight. Moss is good at this game. You need to get better.”

  It took Rory a moment to swallow whatever retort had lurched up her throat. It took her a moment longer to blink her eyes clear. She held out her hand. “Let me see the orders.”

  Grytt handed them over, with small swell of pride.

  We did okay with this one, Rupert.

  But of course Rupert was not here to see it. Cold fingers stirred through Grytt’s guts. Rupert, in Tadeshi custody. She came as close as she ever did to fidgeting, while Rory scanned over the arrest order.


  “Conspiracy against the sovereignty of the Free Worlds of Tadesh. That’s suitably broad and dramatic-sounding, isn’t it? And treason’s a capital offense. They wouldn’t dare execute him. But they could exile him. Or.” The Princess glanced up at Grytt. “Put him on an unlucky, accident-bound ship. Perhaps malfunction during the tesser-hex. Perhaps even pirates.”

  “Rupert would hate pirates.”

  “He would.” Rory almost smiled. Then the moment passed, and the shape of her jaw reminded Grytt entirely of Samur. “I’m certain he’d never make it home. Moss doesn’t want Messer Rupert here, but he damn sure doesn’t want him back with my mother. I mean, that’s why he came with us in the first place.”

  Grytt found a sudden fascination with the desk, scrupulously organized and deliberately impersonal and, therefore, obviously and entirely Rupert’s. “He came to advise you, Princess.”

  “Of course he did. He also came because my mother couldn’t keep him on Thorne, with all the rumors around. Not after she was married.”

  Grytt pretended to study the spines of the books—real books, dear ancestors, a small, heavy, expensive-to-transport fortune right there—on the single shelf behind the desk. She gave up, being unable to read half the titles, bloody pretentious script—and shifted her attention to the paneling on the bulkhead. The wood—synthetic, highly polished—threw back reflections which, to a normal eye, would be only ghosts. To Grytt’s mecha eye, however, such details were easily resolved. Rory’s faint, rueful smile. Zhang’s plain horror. Thorsdottir’s credible attempt at blank-faced.

  “Rumors,” Grytt repeated. She wasn’t doing as well as Thorsdottir. Her own reflection told her that.

  “Grytt.” Rory’s lips quirked. “I’m sixteen, not seven. Everyone knows about my mother and Messer Rupert. Which means Moss does, too.”

  The cold fingers in Grytt’s gut turned into fists. She caught herself considering the logistics of forcibly retrieving Rupert from the detention block, and gave herself a stern scolding for even entertaining the idea. Drop that spark in this environment, she’d have the whole lot of them planning something magnificently stupid.

  Rory was nodding slowly, as if she could hear what Grytt was thinking. “Moss will expect some kind of reaction out of us. So what do I do, Grytt? File a complaint? Call my mother?”

  “What would Rupert tell you?”

  “That isn’t fair.”

  “Nope.”

  “He would say, try diplomacy. No.” Rory shook her head. “He would say, ‘Be sneaky, Princess. The Regent will expect you to act like a child and throw a tantrum.’” Rory laughed, softly and breathlessly. “Which I damn near did. Which I still want to do.”

  Grytt, who shared the Princess’s desire for inappropriate, emotionally driven action, found herself momentarily without any wise—or unwise—advice.

  The moment should have passed, silent and unnoticed, except that Thorsdottir cleared her throat.

  “Ah. If I might interject. There’s something to be said for tantrums, your Highness.”

  Rory stared at her. So did Grytt. Only Zhang seemed unsurprised; she might have been smiling, just a little, but with Zhang, it was hard to tell.

  Rory frowned, in a manner which indicated concentration, rather than ire. “What do you mean?”

  Two spots of carmine appeared on Thorsdottir’s cheeks. “Only—it’s the audience that matters. For some people, seeing the Princess very upset might seem like an opportunity.”

  Rory blinked. “For what?”

  “For intimacy,” said Zhang, and startled everyone. “To gain your confidence, your Highness.”

  “People,” Rory repeated. “You mean Merrick and Jaed.”

  Thorsdottir forgot to be nervous. “I do, your Highness. Or rather—one of them. Both might cause a different problem.”

  A moment of quiet passed, and then another. Then a slow, sly grin crept across Rory’s face. “They won’t come within a meter of me with you around, Grytt. Fortunately, I am so angry with you that I am ordering you to go—oh, elsewhere. The detention block, so that you can keep an eye on the Vizier’s well-being. You are to return there every day until he is released.”

  “Huh. That news will travel.”

  “Yes. Straight to Moss. And he’ll think I’m being a child, throwing a tantrum. Also, you being there will probably annoy him, especially when you do return every day. And then.” Rory looked at Thorsdottir and Zhang. “Then I will go for a walk somewhere Merrick will be—the arboretum, maybe?—so that I might just happen to encounter him in my vulnerable state.”

  “That’s a dangerous game. Relies too much on coincidence. And the boy’s not stupid.”

  Rory snapped a glare at Grytt. “I don’t care about his brains. I care about his ambition.”

  “Your Highness,” said Zhang. “Jaed may be a more opportune target.”

  Grytt looked at her. Rory looked at her. Then Rory said, “What makes you say that?”

  Zhang cast her gaze at Thorsdottir like a cat scrabbling for balance on an unexpectedly narrow windowsill.

  Thorsdottir uncurled a little smile. “Your Highness, let me explain. We see Jaed in the exercise facilities when we’re there. He’s usually alone. Merrick, however, is never alone, anywhere.”

  “The second son,” Grytt said thoughtfully. “Might be jealous of his brother. Maybe you could use that.”

  “Jaed.” Rory performed a credible imitation of Grytt’s grimace. “Jaed,” she said again, as if sampling an unsavory dish for a second time, to confirm the initial opinion. Then she clamped her jaw tight. “You said usually alone. Who comes with him?”

  “Young men of his age. Nobles’ sons, I’m guessing, Highness. But there appear to be no particular bonds among them.”

  “And no women. No girls.”

  “No, Highness.”

  “Oh, stop that,” Rory muttered. “My name is Rory. In private, when it’s just us, call me that. And if you can’t stand the informality, at least leave off with the your Highness business. Grytt only calls me that when I’m being a fool.”

  Thorsdottir and Zhang traded a look that partners only develop after some time working together—or more rapidly, if they are the junior-most members of an elite detail.

  Thorsdottir cleared her throat. “Should we do that also? Call you by title when we think you’re being unwise?”

  “Yes,” said Grytt. “You should.”

  Rory strangled a laugh in the back of her throat and stuffed it into a dark corner where its body would never be found. “Yes. Although be very sure I’m being stupid, first.”

  Zhang and Thorsdottir traded solemn stares.

  “Yes,” Zhang said, after a moment.

  Grytt worried that a smile might stage an escape and take up residence on her face, where its very incongruity would attract unwanted attention. So she scrubbed it away with the back of her hand, under the guise of scratching her chin, and cleared her throat.

  Three pairs of eyes landed on her and waited, expectantly.

  “Since you lot appear to have the tantrum-planning well in hand, I suppose I should begin my exile from your favor, Princess.” Grytt glanced at the chronometer on the wall. “They’ve got him in detention by now.”

  She did not add, If they took him there. If they didn’t just dump him out an aetherlock, but something of the thought must have leaked onto her face. Whatever brief relief Rory might have been feeling evaporated. The Princess looked as if the last traces of childhood had sloughed away.

  “Keep him safe, Grytt. Hear me? That’s not an order.”

  “I know what it is,” said Grytt. She stabbed a nod at Thorsdottir and Zhang, who snapped a pair of matched salutes.

  Ancestors have mercy, they were young. And Rory was even younger. Grytt felt every one of her years settle into bone and joint, where she still had them, and in
to the borders between meat and metal, where she didn’t. The alloy replacements, wrapped in arithmancy and alchemy, remained oblivious, impervious. Not unlike the young, she thought.

  And may these particular young be just as resilient.

  Then Grytt took her leave, making certain to hit the door on her way through—as it opened too slowly—and to stomp through the foyer, past the same knots of personnel as had heralded her entrance. She was no thespian, but she had never found it particularly difficult to mislead people if you simply fulfilled their expectations.

  If anyone had asked Grytt, she might have admitted that Rory’s adoption of Thorsdottir and Zhang—the beginning of her own staff, of people who would be hers, first and foremost—had been her goal all along. But as usual, no one did.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In Which The Princess Negotiates

  It is assumed, by those who claim maturity (which should not be conflated with wisdom), that a rational adult wants stability, predictability, routines. It is further claimed, by those same mature folk, that one of the markers of youth is adaptability, a flexibility of mind and spirit which enables a person to acclimatize to changes in routine, circumstance, and habit. Those who can endure, and eventually overcome, the instability, are admired for their resourcefulness.

  Those individuals who seek this instability are deemed fools, children, or adventurers; and it is generally assumed that an individual will either grow wiser, grow up, or expire.

  Stationers, like most people, live and die by schedules. Urse was no more or less typical of that than, say, Thorsdottir’s farming family. But where Thorsdottir’s youth had been marked by celestial motion and season, and had been subject to, and victim of, random acts of meteorology, Ursan time was marked in arbitrary shifts, in which there was no visible variation. Oh, perhaps a planet might swing past outside a viewport, or the constellations might shift through their accustomed patterns; but life inside the station did not vary. There was no weather, no sunrise, no sunset, no clouds. The rainshowers in the arboretum did not count, since they occurred on a precise schedule (like everything else) designed for the optimal health and well-being of the botanical residents. When an inspired horticultural arithmancer attempted to hex the plants through seasonal cycles, producing changes in foliage color and profusion, so many complaints and queries were filed that the Minister of Education was forced to conduct a public symposium on the impact of planetary motion on plant life, including invited botanists from each the Free Worlds that supported vegetative inhabitants, native or immigrant. The symposium ran for three days and at rather substantial expense, the results of which were an uptick in the number of students studying botany, an increased consumer demand for houseplants, and general apathy from the general public, who were relieved that the garish new leaves would soon fall off and grow back a proper, predictable green.