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

by K. Eason

  Jaed did not actually consider what Rory would do with such knowledge. He also did not examine too closely his own desire for her to think well of him. He especially did not consider whether or not she would actually care if he disappeared, beyond her own inconvenience.

  He made a point of looking at the lens of Thorne embassy’s ’bot, in passing. Then he passed out of its range, and into his father’s domain.

  * * *

  • • •

  The public wing of the municipal complex was predictably empty. It was perhaps two hours past the shift-change, too early for meal breaks, past the usual hours for official business. The transparent-walled offices were empty, reduced to dormant turings and desks in varying states of order. Jaed listened to the muffled echo of his boots on the decking. When he’d been small, he and Merrick had chased each other through the corridors, slapping their feet as loudly as possible, laughing, reveling in the echoes. The game always ended with misfortune, either in the person of one of the long line of grim nurses charged with managing their childhood, or with a slip on, and subsequent collision with, the deckplate. The latter tragedy had most often afflicted Jaed, as he was the smaller and less physically gifted.

  Jaed eyed several places where the deckplate seemed a little darker, stained with youthful missteps, and stifled the urge to run through the corridors again. No doubt if he tried, security would converge in triplicate from one of the opaque offices that studded the corridor like missing teeth in a smile.

  The three transparent walls of the Regent’s office were unsurprisingly also dark, the alloy hexed to an impervious matte grey. The doors, however, sat partway open. It might have been an invitation, if the Regent were a different man. Instead, the gap looked to Jaed like a mouth, ready to snap shut. His father’s secretary had already gone home. His desk was visible through the gap, empty and sterilely neat, as if the office had already eaten him.

  Jaed knew his father was watching. The ’bot’s unblinking black compound eye glittered over the doorway. The Regent was on the other side, probably frowning, waiting in a facsimile of patience for Jaed to come in.

  For a handful of heartbeats, Jaed thought about turning around and walking out. See how far he got. See if he was faster now, if security came after him. But this was Urse, and a station does not offer much chance in the way of escape.

  He stepped through the doors, and crossed the empty antechamber. The second set of doors, the one behind which his father waited, were closed. Another, identical ’bot stared from its perch above them. Jaed was unsurprised when the door did not open. The keypad glowed red for locked. His father would expect him to stop and request access, like any other subject seeking audience with the sitting substitute monarch.

  Jaed closed his eyes, aware that his father would interpret the gesture as fear or hesitation, and practiced the simple hex Rory had taught him, summoning the symbols on the backs of his eyelids. They remained when he opened his eyes, ghost images marking the border between the layers of aether. He took a last breath and shifted his awareness across that border.

  Then he touched the keypad, producing a subdued chime.

  The doors slid apart, silent as judgment.

  “Jaed,” said the Regent. “Come in.”

  Jaed did so, and for the first time, looked at his father through an arithmancer’s eyes.

  Rory had told him it was a simple hex, both in execution and in results. Auras were merely indicators of a person’s emotional state, faint bands of color that varied in intensity based on the subject, the subject’s mood, the arithmancer, and the amount of ambient light.

  “It’s not very impressive,” she’d told him, when he’d tried it out that afternoon. “I hope you aren’t too disappointed.”

  He hadn’t been, his delight so obvious that Rory’s own aura had picked up and reflected his enthusiasm, in shimmering bands of blue, purple, turing-text cyan. Thorsdottir’s aura had been less enthusiastic, a vivid and disapproving sienna, which only grew brighter when Jaed had grinned at her. Zhang’s had been cooler, muted, exactly what Jaed expected to see from his father, who was the coldest person Jaed knew.

  So his first glimpse of his father’s aura startled him: a pyrotechnic display of jagged orange, shot with unhealthy pinks. Jaed had a moment to contemplate it before a slick void of bottomless black devoured the aura and slammed him out of the hex, settling reality over him with a jolt that made his teeth ache.

  A counter-hex. Of course his father had counter-hexes. Stupid to imagine otherwise. But instructive, too: orange was agitated, pink was the border of real upset, and their brightness indicated that the Regent was very distressed, indeed.

  Though he didn’t look distressed. He sat behind his desk, his cheeks and chin limned green from the turing’s screen, his eyes as cold and distant as the planet hanging outside the porthole.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  Jaed shook his head. He locked his hands behind his back to keep them still. His throat, arid with this unaccustomed defiance, snagged his voice on the way out and tore it ragged. “I’d rather stand.”

  The Regent nodded slowly, as if an invisible someone were murmuring expected information into his ear. “Then by all means, remain standing. Do you know why you are here?”

  Jaed knew this ritual, the rules, the inevitable conclusion. He must confess—fault, error, accident, poor judgment. A tiny upwell of anger trickled from his belly, burning the back of his throat.

  He lifted the uninjured shoulder, a gesture calculated to irritate with its apparent carelessness. “No, sir.”

  The Regent blinked. “Do you imagine that I am a fool, Jaed?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Then I choose to believe that you are not, either. I wish to discuss your new relationship with Rory Thorne.” The second brow climbed to meet its fellow. “Unless you expect me to believe you two have been carrying on some secret liaison, prior to the Vizier’s arrest?”

  Jaed frowned. He wished he had the courage to say, believe what you like. Instead, he said nothing.

  His father’s mouth turned up in humorless smile. “Your brother believes you’ve been sneaking about, outwitting us both.”

  “Maybe I have.”

  “I thought we agreed there are no fools in this room.” The Regent leveled his brows and leaned forward on his desk, hands folded neatly, calmly, as if he were discussing a dinner menu. “I was beginning to believe the Princess was plotting something truly worrisome, even without the Vizier. Instead, she has behaved, if not predictably, at least conventionally. She’s looking for an ally. She chose you.”

  The Regent laid the very slightest emphasis on the last word, almost imperceptible, unless the listener was a younger son attuned to a father’s disapproval. Jaed was prepared to hear it and for the familiar ache in his chest. He clung to his anger like a drowning man clings to a broken plank, believing himself saved even as the sea’s chill soaks into blood and bone.

  “Let Merrick beat me again. Maybe she’ll change her mind.”

  The Regent smiled, all the way to both sides of his mouth. “She won’t. Your defeat made her more inclined to you, but that only works once. If it becomes a regular occurrence, her pity will turn into contempt.”

  Jaed’s ribcage, which had constricted alarmingly around his heart and lungs, expanded. Air rushed into his lungs, lingered a moment, and rushed out again, bypassing his wits entirely. “She doesn’t pity me.”

  “Of course she does. You should thank Merrick for that. Now she sees him as a bully, and I don’t believe she’ll ally with someone she despises, no matter what it gains for her. The Princess is a clever girl, but she is not her mother.”

  Jaed ground his teeth together. He could feel the anger rearranging his features, stretching the healing bruise, cracking the scabs on his lips. He told himself he would say nothing, that that was always how his fathe
r won, that he would win this time. He reminded himself that his father, for all his appearance, was also upset. Those orange spikes in his aura might be because Jaed had surprised him, because Merrick had disappointed him, because he needed the weaker of his sons when he would prefer the stronger.

  The Regent nodded, as if Jaed has spoken aloud. He leaned back and examined his younger son with the same detachment as a sculptor confronted with a flawed block of marble. “She chose you,” he said again. “We shall have to work with that.”

  Jaed pressed his lips together. He tasted blood from the split, and added to it, biting hard on the half-healed wound. Then he raised his chin, and met his father’s eyes, and asked, in a solid approximation of composure, “Work with me how, exactly?”

  “Well. You tell me. What does Rory want from you? Or rather, what does she think you can do for her?”

  “She hasn’t asked for anything.”

  “Jaed.” The Regent shook his head. “No fools in this room.”

  “She wanted me to ask you to release the Vizier. I told her you wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “And she said?”

  Please, please, the ’bots could not record auras. Rory had told him lies showed glowing and toxic green.

  “That I was her only hope. That she would do anything I asked.”

  The Regent blinked. “And what have you asked for, so far?”

  Jaed said nothing, very carefully. He did not blink, very carefully. He dragged the corner of his mouth back and up into an unkind, knowing smirk, and tasted fresh blood.

  The Regent made a sound like a leaky airlock. “Perhaps she is more like her mother than I thought.” He tapped his first two fingers together. “So, having delivered her side of the bargain—she did, I presume? Yes. So. She will expect you to make your request to me. Which you are doing, right now.”

  Jaed side-eyed the ’bot on the top of the bookshelf, a matte black geometric wedged between a leatherbound copy of Herrick’s Treatise on the Rights of Kings and a mirri gazing-globe. He fancied he could see his own reflection, and hoped he looked cooler than he felt.

  “Does that mean you’ll release the Vizier?”

  The Regent looked at Jaed for a long moment. “What use would she have for you,” he said finally, “if she got what she wanted?”

  “What use will she have for me if I can’t deliver?”

  “You will. We simply need her to realign her desires in a more appropriate direction. I believe Ivar should return from Beo to begin preparations for his coronation and his marriage. He needs to acquaint himself with his future queen.” He looked at Jaed and waited.

  Be quiet, be quiet, be—

  “How will that help? She’ll just ask him to help her, and what if he says ‘release the Vizier?’”

  “Jaed.” The Regent raised his eyes ceilingward for a moment, then closed them, and waited through a pair of breaths. “Do you think Rory wants to marry Ivar?”

  “No. But he’s the Prince, she has no choice—and I think she will, regardless. Especially if he’d get the Vizier for her.”

  “There will be no Vizier to get,” the Regent said, in exactly the same tone as he might pronounce on the wetness of water. He gathered his lips into a razor-edged moue. “Rory is a devious girl. She intends for you to care for her, do you see? To bear for her some affection. You two have made quite a spectacle of yourselves. How much of that is genuine, Jaed?”

  Jaed swallowed. Shrugged, while his eyes slid sideways. Treatise on the Rights of Kings. Mirri gazing ball. A red leather-bound book with Kreshti script. He clenched his bruised knuckles.

  “Ah. I see. You believed her, didn’t you? Thought she was growing fond of you? That is what she wants.” The Regent sounded like he was smiling, as if each word were silk, slipping through his teeth. “And so, we will let her believe she is succeeding. You will rescue her, Jaed, from Ivar.”

  It was an absurd idea. Jaed couldn’t rescue himself from Merrick. And Rory had Zhang and Thorsdottir and Grytt. Rory had herself, for that matter. Ivar might need rescuing, if he laid hands on Rory Thorne.

  If she protested, which she wouldn’t, if they married. He could picture the look, that grim set to her mouth, like the one with which she’d propositioned him, a mere tenday ago, which he had not seen on her mouth since. That had been desperation, with a liberal strand of hope. He imagined that expression settling into her face, soaking into her eyes, becoming duty.

  Jaed’s stomach did a fair approximation of a singularity, drawing into a single point of bile, sucking all the air out of his lungs until his heart flopped and hammered in his throat. His cheeks burned.

  The Regent watched him closely, a tiny, malevolent pleasure flickering through his pale eyes like light over ice. “I think,” he said after a moment, “we can agree, you and I, that the royal marriage should not take place.”

  And, by extension, neither should the coronation. That was treason. That was also, when Jaed thought about it, not much of a revelation. He’d known his father was ambitious, and he’d never actually been able to imagine Ivar on the Tadeshi throne.

  That spot had always been Merrick’s. Except that Merrick would need Rory to hold a royal seat. And Merrick didn’t have her.

  Neither do you. She doesn’t love you.

  But that didn’t matter, did it? She needed him, or at least his influence. She had sought him out for that very reason. And if

  if, remember that, if

  his father was correct, and Rory saw him as nothing more than a tool, well, he did not need to concern himself with her feelings. And if she actually liked him—that did not need to change. She would prefer him to Ivar. She had to.

  Jaed’s future, newly imagined, shuddered and split. Suddenly there were new vectors, new possibilities. He closed his eyes. The memory of the hex equations lingered on the backs of his eyelids, almost too faint to read.

  “Are you listening to me, Jaed?”

  He opened his eyes, and for the first time, met his father’s gaze without fear.

  “Yes.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In Which Plans Change Abruptly

  Grytt was not often surprised, either by circumstance or by human behavior. But when she encountered Jaed Moss lurking in a side corridor, out of which he came more quickly than prudence might indicate, she was surprised in both senses.

  The mecha eye made note of him first, flashing red threat on its HUD, reporting speed and trajectory that suggested a body

  approximately one-point-eight meters tall and seventy-odd kilograms, probability: male

  coming at her out of a passage that, at this point in second shift, was always empty. Although her endocrine system responded with increased adrenaline and accelerated heartbeat, Grytt did not jump back or cry out. She did as her training and habit dictated, and struck first: to pin the assailant to the wall with momentum and metal, reserving an option to inflict further harm.

  Jaed would have acquired several new bruises, at the least, and some time with the chirurgeons, at the worst, had her mecha eye not identified him

  Moss, Jaed

  before impact. She promptly downgraded him from threat to nuisance and arrested her own forward motion in the same moment.

  Jaed, to his credit, took a step back and raised both hands, palms out, presumably in some attempt to reassure her that he was no threat. Or perhaps he had realized exactly how close he’d come to making intimate acquaintance with the bulkhead. Both things were true.

  There were protocols for addressing the Regent’s offspring. Honorifics. Rupert would know what they were, but Rupert was where he’d been for the past twenty days, locked in solitary detention and beyond anyone’s asking. That knowledge did not predispose Grytt to patience.

  “What do you want?” she snapped.

  The younger Moss boy blinked, clearly unaccustomed
to being addressed in that manner. Then he tipped his head sideways, back down the corridor from which he’d emerged so precipitously.

  “Can we step back a little bit? I’ve disabled the ’bots in this corridor.”

  Grytt forbore the obvious how. She guessed Jaed was putting his new, unhexed pass-string to good use. Or rather, to some use, the goodness of which was subject to debate. This was, after all, the Regent’s younger son inviting her into an unmonitored patch of naked decking and bulkhead, into which he expected her to go on his assurance. She was not concerned for her safety. She could see, with the mecha eye, that the corridor was empty and devoid of hatches, doorways, or other strategic openings that might conceal a triad of Tadeshi security. But she did not have Rory’s fairy gift, and she smelled trap.

  She shook her head. “We can talk here.”

  Jaed closed both eyes. His jaw clenched. Then he took a visible breath and looked at her again. Credit to the boy: he did not flinch from her face.

  “We can’t. We could be seen.”

  “Better to be alone with the boy chasing Rory, then. Me. The Kreshti mecha-maid. That won’t seem suspicious, especially when you reappear with new bruises.”

  Jaed blinked again. “No,” he said. “I mean.” He licked his lip again, and shook his head. “I’m not trying to set you up. I’m trying to warn you.”

  “Why?”

  He retreated a step into the passage, where, presumably, the ’bots would not be watching. “You’re supposed to say, about what?”

  Grytt slid a foot closer to the passage and pitched her voice to follow him. “And I’m saying, why warn me, and not the Princess?”

  Unless, she thought, sudden and horrible. Her mecha hand whined into a fist. “Has something happened to Rory?”

  Jaed turned a visible two shades more pale. “She’s fine! As far as I know, she’s fine. I came to you because I knew you’d be here, now, coming back from the detention block, and I can’t just walk into the Thorne compound and demand an audience. Thorsdottir would kill me.”