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

by K. Eason

  Rory glanced at the chronometer. “You two should go to bed,” she said. “I’m going to keep looking. If something happened, I think there’ll be some try at covering up the information. So I’ll just dig a little bit.”

  Thorsdottir and Zhang looked at each other a long moment while Rory pretended not to notice. That they wanted to marshal some objection was obvious; and it was equally obvious they, like she, wanted to know what had happened to Grytt. And they, like she, knew that if she did get into trouble, well, it wasn’t the sort that ’slingers and martial arts could solve.

  “All right,” Thorsdottir said. “We can send Stary and Franko over.”

  “No.”

  “There are rules,” Thorsdottir said, doggedly. “You can’t be left alone.”

  “I’m aware of the rules.” Rory sighed. Stary and Franko were large, uniformed presences who always called her Princess and Highness and snapped salutes. They were, in Grytt’s words, sticklers for protocol. They were suitable escorts for, oh, the embassy; but there were reasons they did not come along on liaisons with Jaed, or to the gym. They might not know what she was doing on the turing, but they would know she shouldn’t be doing it during the small hours of third shift. Thorsdottir and Zhang knew that, too, but they wouldn’t argue.

  “Stary and Franco need to stay where they are,” said Rory. “You can tell them Grytt hasn’t returned—I imagine they know that already—but that we don’t know where she is. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Tell them that, too. Then get some rest, because I think tomorrow’s going to be busy.”

  Thorsdottir steeled herself visibly. Rory sensed an imminent Highness. She held up a hand.

  “If Grytt doesn’t return, you two can move in tomorrow. But in the meantime, just trust me. I am looking for Grytt, I won’t do anything stupid, and if I need you, I’ll call.”

  Thorsdottir looked at Zhang. Then her shoulders sagged. “All right.”

  “I’ll make you a pot of coffee,” said Zhang.

  Thus fortified, Rory settled down to do some serious arithmancy. It stood to reason that, had Grytt been apprehended doing something untoward—and there was no doubt in Rory’s mind that had there been an arrest attempt, there would have been physical damage—there would be some sort of record, somewhere, in the hospital files. She was most afraid that said records would be in the morgue records, and so she began there.

  She did not find any mention of Grytt, or of Messer Rupert, in the morgue subfolder. She expanded her search, looking for information specifically tagged as official, diplomatic, or restricted. No Grytt. One small file on Messer Rupert, dated from his arrest, making note of his general health. There was a second entry, dated three days ago, making note that he’d lost two kilos since his incarceration, and recommending more aggressive measures to ensure that he did, in fact, eat, and was not attempting some sort of hunger strike.

  Rory reread that file twice, and made special note of the attending chirurgeon for her future attention. It was probably not his fault, exactly; the Regent was the sort of man to hold a chirurgeon responsible for his patient’s health. But there was a small knot of anger in her belly, keeping company with the worry, that did not care if the chirurgeon had had a ’slinger pressed to his temple while he examined Messer Rupert. She had a name, now, and if this was a man Moss trusted to look after his valuable prisoners, then he might have access to other interesting patients as well.

  She soon discovered that whatever his other skills, the chirurgeon was no arithmancer. The hexes on his personal files were rudimentary, the sort non-arithmancers purchased and installed to give themselves the illusion of security against real arithmancers. It was somewhat surprising, given his access to sensitive personnel. Here was the Regent’s medical file, and Merrick’s, and Jaed’s. She paused, debating the relative merits of further investigation.

  And it was in that pause that she spotted a folder named Valenko, Ivar that was so marked with forbidden and access restricted hexes that Rory revised her opinion of the physician’s arithmancy, until she realized the hexes bore the same trace-markers as the ones Messer Rupert had cataloged. The work of the same arithmancer, the arithmancer, the one who had caught Messer Rupert.

  Rory sipped her coffee, burned her lip, and frowned. The layers of security seemed absurd, even for royal records, unless there was something dramatic in Ivar’s file. Perhaps he had some debilitating, progressive disease. She examined the small surge of hope that produced and frowned at herself. There must be something important in the files, anyway, that meant they, alone of everyone’s, had to be hexed to inaccessibility.

  “Time to take off the mittens,” Rory told the coffee cup. Then she set it down and slid it halfway across the table, safely out of spilling range.

  Messer Rupert had taught Rory his preferred method of traversing the aether, which involved stillness, quiet, focus, breathing, all activities to which children are not generally suited, even Princesses. If he exaggerated the degree to which one must have quiet, focus, stillness, well, he could be forgiven for it, particularly when his Princess had proved herself more stubborn than impatient, when it came to arithmancy. He had been trying to protect her, as much as the locks in the Thorne palace, as much as anyone’s privacy when an adolescent commenced observation on everyone’s auras.

  Rory suspected Messer Rupert’s motives already, having seen the speed with which he had extricated himself from the aether. She had also made note of the nosebleed, his complexion, and the hour he’d spent in the small hours of third shift, heaving up what little supper he’d managed to eat with as much quiet as a man could manage while he was turning himself inside out. So there was, she reckoned, some merit to slow, deliberate arithmancy, and in adhering to the steps one already knew.

  She sat still, and took deep breaths, and let her gaze slide soft-focus. The first layer was simplest. The contents of the room acquired an extra shadow, a little border of white noise that meant unliving synthetics. Her hands, however, were spidered through with faint yellow threads, which meant she was nervous.

  She breathed carefully, slowly, until the yellow disappeared. Then she fixed her gaze on the terminal’s screen. It had no aura, being both synthetic and unsentient. Rory stared past it and through it, until its physical shell gave way to a wire-frame version of itself, through which she could see pathways composed of light and unreflective blocks of hardware, tiny circuits she could disrupt, overload, reroute—or repair, if, as Messer Rupert had admonished her constantly, she would just use her powers for good.

  All good, Messer Rupert. Promise.

  She had not often attempted this third step, and never without him there to observe (and, should she require, assist). Her heartbeat fluttered. Her aura, already an arithmantic step back, flared hot. It would be red, she thought, and orange. She willed it cool. Will herself back to calm. Then she fixed her gaze on a light path, and focused.

  Imagine the atoms, Messer Rupert had told her. Imagine them floating in void. Then see them, and see past them.

  Rory’s eyes kept locking onto the glowing lines, until their images burned white on the back of her eyelids. She blinked, and breathed, and held still: Grytt’s teaching, as much as Rupert’s.

  The one in control wins the battle.

  She was not certain that was true, exactly, but it was good enough advice. Certainly the one who lost control lost the battle very quickly. And this was just a layer of aether, small step, nothing difficult, if one counted simple stepping both inward and down, until she shifted perception to a place on the other side of those floating atoms, where the wire frame resolved into strings of symbols and numbers.

  The hexes, from that vantage, were easily seen: errant equations wrapped around honest data like chokevines strangling trees. The preferred method of dealing with chokevines involved sharp hatchets, wielded with some care, lest the host be likewise damaged. Rory employed the arith
mantic equivalent, rearranging the hexes—a changed command here, a parenthesis relocated—until she convinced the hexes that she had legitimate access, and the layers of security peeled open like bogflower petals during rain.

  To her credit, Rory hesitated. The Vizier had taught her arithmancy, but he had also taught her ethics. This was an invasion of a man’s privacy, in particular, the man she was intended to marry (whatever her own opinions in the matter). She would be privy to information he might not choose to share with her, knowledge of which she would have to conceal from him. It was not a good foundation for a relationship. It was also illegal, by Tadeshi statute. The Regent could—well, if not exactly arrest her, move to restrict her freedom; he could even dissolve the marriage contract and return her to Thorne.

  She considered that. Then she opened the folder.

  Inside were four files, each named Valenko, I, each with a different datestamp. She opened the earliest, and largest, first. It was a medical chronicle of Ivar’s minority, an unremarkable list of illnesses and treatments. What was interesting, however, was the extensive alchemical analyses of his blood and his humors, cross-referenced with childhood events. He tended toward melancholy, with a surplus of yellow bile linked to his parents’ deaths. A note from his physician indicated optimism that, given time, the Prince’s humors might rebalance. He was young, after all. But each subsequent evaluation revealed no rise in sanguinity or phlegmaticism. Upon his early enlistment at sixteen, the Prince was severely melancholic. There was a note, by the same physician, that the mandatory service should be waived, or at least delayed. There was a subsequent order, signed by the Regent, accepting the Prince’s early enlistment so that his service would be completed by his coronation.

  “Well,” murmured Rory. “So much for medical advice.”

  The apartment made no comment.

  She scrolled to the next file, expecting a mid-service evaluation; and indeed, it looked like Ivar’s bio-alchemy—severe melancholy, punctuated by choleric outbursts in response to stress—but the numbers were not exact, even to Rory’s untrained eye.

  Within acceptable parameters, said the notes, with an accompanying list of deviation percentages and analyses. Then followed several subfiles, chronicling basic health checkups, including blood alchemistry, over the span of nearly a month. Rory was no physician, and her knowledge of anatomy was fairly basic; but she judged that the falling percentages of whatever the long, technical sounding words were, in some columns, and the rise in others, meant nothing good. The last page confirmed her suspicions: it was a post-mortem, complete with 2D stills.

  Rory sat up in her chair and said several words Messer Rupert would not have approved of. That was Ivar’s body on the table. Or at least it had Ivar’s face, the body itself showing the marks of autopsy and extensive, invasive medical examination. Another Princess, one whose body-maid was not half-mecha, who had not grown up during the War, might have felt faint, or queasy, and closed the file. Rory kept looking, despite the shock rattling in her chest.

  But Ivar was not dead. Or rather, this person, this corpse, could not be Ivar, unless the Prince she’d met wasn’t actually the Prince. She had suspected as much, and, being now almost seventeen, experienced a momentary surge of vindication. Messer Rupert had doubted, and here was proof—

  Of what, Rory?

  She sighed. Proof of something untoward, certainly; but the exact what remained unclear. The project Moss had reassigned and relocated to Beo had been about cryostasis. There hadn’t been anything mentioned about cloning, which this certainly seemed to be, and which, to her knowledge, was alchemical fiction, not alchemical fact. And yet, the files suggested otherwise, and she had two more to examine before she could think of settling on a conclusion she could share with Zhang and Thorsdottir (and Grytt, please, Grytt, too).

  The remaining files looked much like this second one: a detailed chronicle of a version of Ivar, all culminating with massive biological failure and an autopsy. The last file, the fourth, had a commencement date approximately eight days prior to the formal reception at which she had been presented to an Ivar who clearly did not remember her, which made perfect sense because he’d been a tenday old at that point. His autopsy had taken place on Urse, exactly four days after the reception. The file noted that there was some improvement in longevity, with several hypotheses offered for further testing.

  Further testing. Either Ivar was alive, then, or samples of him were, on Beo. Rory had never been so conflicted about being right before. Imagining Moss’s monstrosity was one thing; confronting it in hexed files was quite another. On the one hand, she had proof of his perfidy, and of Ivar’s victimhood. On the other, were Moss to discover what she knew—well. He was not the sort of man to stop at violence, clearly.

  She had to secure Messer Rupert’s release, immediately. He was too vulnerable in the Regent’s custody, both as a guarantee against her good behavior, and as a potential victim himself. She could make Grytt understand that, surely.

  She exited the aether hoping to find Grytt standing over her, scowling and demanding to know what exactly she thought she was doing. Instead, she had only a headache and a tepid cup of coffee for company.

  Thorsdottir and Zhang found Rory in much the same condition the following morning, although the contents of the coffee cup had changed twice in the interim, and the headache had been exacerbated by a three-hour nap on crossed forearms.

  Thorsdottir looked Rory over. “You haven’t slept,” she said, by way of greeting.

  “You haven’t, either,” said Rory.

  “No,” said Zhang. She frowned at the coffee pot, which was empty, and began to rectify that situation. “We briefed Stary and Franko on our situation. Then we strategized.”

  Thorsdottir jerked her chin at Rory’s turing. “No word from Grytt?”

  “I was about to ask you that.”

  “She hasn’t called in. Stary and Franko reported nothing either, on the usual channels. No security alerts to which we’re privy. If the Tadeshi got her, you’d think we’d’ve heard. It’s like she fell off the station.”

  “She might have,” said Rory. “A shuttle that left the station at oh-one-hundred, destination Beo. I found an entry in last night’s log.”

  “Why would Grytt go to Beo?”

  Rory dropped her face into her hands. The bones felt hot, too heavy for her skin to hold. “To rescue Ivar, maybe. But I don’t know how she’d’ve found out, and if she did, why she wouldn’t tell me.”

  A moment’s silence, in which Rory imagined Thorsdottir and Zhang sharing one of their looks again, the ones which meant, alternately, what does she mean? and I wish Grytt would say something right about now.

  Rory expected she’d see the latter a lot more frequently, unless Grytt performed a miracle and appeared at the door. She expected no miracles forthcoming today.

  “Prince Ivar,” said Rory, before Thorsdottir—it was almost always Thorsdottir—could ask, “is a prisoner on Beo. They’re cloning him. Or his genetic material. I assume he’s still actually alive, but I can’t prove it. I can, however, prove that he’s on Beo. Would you like to see?”

  Zhang abandoned the coffee pot, having set it to its task, and came briskly to her partner’s side. The pair of them leaned over the desk as Rory rotated the turing so that they could read it.

  “Took me most of the night to get these copied and unhexed. See? Three Ivars, all with very brief lifespans, all clearly clones of the original.”

  Rory was gratified to see her guards’ faces go from dubious to horrified. This time it was Zhang who spoke first.

  “Why would Moss do this?” she asked.

  “If he marries me to Ivar, only it’s an Ivar-clone, I’ll be a widow in a matter of weeks. At which point I am Queen Regent, in need of a new husband, and there will be Jaed, very conveniently. At that point, I imagine the original Ivar will die for good.”
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  “So you can’t get married. It’s not just a matter of preference anymore.”

  Rory leaned back. Her neck creaked. She was certain she could feel her brain moving in her skull, heavy with new knowledge. “I don’t see that I can avoid it, unless we can rescue Ivar, the real Ivar, and bring him back here. I don’t think the Regent can continue to hold power if everyone sees what he’s done.”

  Leave aside, Rory thought, that her suggestion would cause a civil war.

  Thorsdottir lifted a single forefinger, drawing Rory’s attention back out of her own skull. “And you think Grytt went to rescue Ivar?”

  “I don’t know. If she found out about him, then she should have told me. And I don’t know how she would have, because this took me most of the night, and I’m an arithmancer, and I have Messer Rupert’s notes.” Rory sat up a little straighter, and named the fear that was pressing icy fingers into every corner of her chest. “I did find an entry in hospital records from late third shift. It wasn’t to emergency services. It was to the morgue. The details were hexed, but.” She shrugged. “I got a look. It wasn’t Grytt, unless they lied in the records. It was three dead men, all Tadeshi security, all dead from ’slinger shots. They were found in the same bay that the shuttle was in, the one that left for Beo.”

  “Three bodies,” murmured Zhang. She sounded impressed.

  Thorsdottir, in a complete reversal of roles, said nothing. She squinted past the turing as if the aether itself might yield up an answer.

  Rory knew better. She’d been plying the aether most of third shift. “I know. The bodies in the bay sound like Grytt’s doing. But that means she killed enemies under truce. That’s an act of war. Why would she do that? Why would you do that?”

  Thorsdottir looked as serious as Rory had ever seen her. “To defend you. I can’t think of another reason.”

  “To defend yourselves?”

  Zhang caught her breath. “Yes,” she said, while Thorsdottir frowned and clenched her jaw. “Unless our deaths would serve your interests.”