by K. Eason
Meet me at the observation porthole by the recreation center, 1130. -RT
It would get him out of the umbrella of his father’s security, at least. There was something to be said for un-royalty, that it could go wherever it liked without escort. And he would come. If he didn’t she would find him and drag him bodily to Rory’s aid. Thorsdottir was fairly certain that was not Rory’s intent; but she found herself hoping for an opportunity, nevertheless.
Thorsdottir herself did not expect to make it more than two intersections before discovery and apprehension, and was somewhat surprised, therefore, when she made it to the observation porthole without incident. She had imagined herself something of a celebrity: clips of her sparring match with Jaed were all over the network, and yet here she was, walking the Ursan mid-first-shift corridors with scarcely two glances from passersby. But she had been in her uniform, then, hadn’t she? And now she was just another woman walking through the station.
Jaed arrived at the rendezvous two minutes early, hair still damp and curling, clothes sticking to him in the places that were most likely to be wet, if one had been rushed with a towel. He leaned against the railing, breathing a little hard, and let his head hang from his shoulders as if it were too heavy for his neck.
Thorsdottir detached herself from her hiding-in-plain-sight patch of bulkhead. She could have approached obliquely, allowing him time to notice. She came from the back instead.
“Thought you’d be late, did you? You are.”
Jaed spun quickly, one hand still on the railing, the other dropped loose at his hip. Thorsdottir noted the improvement in balance, the way his knees stayed under his hips. The speed with which he turned.
And he looked tired. Bruise-blue under his eyes, pastier than usual, even for a station-boy. Thorsdottir, whose skin bore a permanent scattering of freckles from a childhood in the sun, thought he looked like milk. Bloodless. At the commencement of their acquaintance, Thorsdottir equated appearance with actuality; but she had spent almost as much time around him as Rory had, and exchanged bruises with him, and had revised her estimation of his worth as an opponent, if not quite as a human being.
He frowned at her. “Thorsdottir?”
It was Thorsdottir’s experience that, having asked an obvious question, people did not expect an answer; and if one wasn’t forthcoming, would answer it themselves, and save her the trouble of follow-up conversation. She raised a brow.
“It’s the uniform,” he said. “Or the lack of it.” His frown deepened. “What’s going on? Where’s Rory? Where is your uniform?”
“In reverse order: the flat, possibly under arrest but more probably leading your father’s men on a merry chase through Urse, and that is what Rory’s trying to discern.”
“Under arrest?”
“Possibly. Can we please move this conversation elsewhere?” She made an idle flourish with her fingers. “’Bots have ears.”
Jaed’s frown sunk all the way to scowl. He closed his eyes. Thorsdottir watched his hands clench on the railing, the muscles lock all the way up his arms. Arithmancy, she guessed, though he seemed to expend more effort at it than Rory.
“Now they don’t,” he said, after a moment. He sounded like he’d forgotten to breathe. “We’re safe.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.” His eyes opened, wide and pale and indignant. He didn’t like to be challenged. She knew that. It was exactly why she did it. They were of a height, another thing he did not like. It took effort for him to stare down at her. “Now where’s Rory?”
“Your father sent security to collect her. She’s stalling. It’s working, for now.” Thorsdottir cut her glance sideways, toward one of the public monitors. “Don’t see any breaking news about the arrest of the Princess of Thorne. I take that as a good sign.”
“Why are you here, then?”
“Orders.” She grimaced. “Rory wanted me to tell you what she found out last night.”
He frowned. “Her Highness.”
“Only when she’s being unwise. So to me, right now, she’s Rory, even though she asked me to find you. Now listen, my lord. Will you?”
Color smeared across his cheeks. But he kept his teeth together. Nodded, once and sharply.
Thorsdottir gritted her own teeth. There was no time for storytelling. “Grytt didn’t come home last night. Rory stayed up checking all the hospitals and security reports. She found reports of a fight in a shuttle bay, and dead security. She also found Prince Ivar’s medical records and hexed her way into them. He’s a clone. Or he’s been cloned. Point is, the man she met here on station wasn’t the real Ivar. He’s on Beo, if he’s even alive. She thinks Grytt might’ve found out, and that’s maybe where she was going. She wanted to ask your father about it, but his men were waiting for her this morning and what is wrong with you?”
Jaed’s face had evolved as she spoke, shifting through phases like a moon. The final phase was a disturbing shade of grey, as if he were already dead and cold. It reminded Thorsdottir of her brother’s face, the time he’d run to town for a power convertor and bear-cats had gotten into the sheep. He might not’ve been able to stop a bear-cat, but he hadn’t been there to try, either.
Thorsdottir recalled an incident in her childhood when a cow had kicked her twelve-year-old self in the chest. She felt exactly like that now: as if she might never draw a full breath again.
“You knew.”
“No. Not about the Prince.” Jaed held up a hand. “Listen to me, all right? I knew about Grytt. That was my . . . fault. They were moving the Vizier last night. I told Grytt. I, ah, gave her my father’s pass-string, so she could do something about it.”
Thorsdottir had never been this angry before. She had also never been this calm. “Where were they moving him?”
“Beo.”
Of course. “When did you tell Grytt about it?”
“Early second shift. She was a little late leaving detention. I intercepted her maybe two cross-corridors up-ring from there.”
Thorsdottir chewed over the information. It was a good explanation for Grytt’s absence, and for the bodies in the shuttle bay. Not for the shuttle’s current location, however, or its passengers.
“And how did you know about the Vizier’s transfer?”
Jaed pressed his lips together. “I was poking around my father’s files.”
Thorsdottir had brothers, and she had learned to sniff out the truth in much the same way she learned to cross a barnyard. Lies, in her experience, had a great deal in common with cowpats. They stank, and you didn’t want to step in them.
She wished for a good pitchfork.
Jaed’s gaze had slunk sidelong, and was roaming the vista on the porthole’s other side with practiced disinterest. Thorsdottir considered arguing with him. She considered grabbing him by the neck and shaking him. She said, instead:
“The Regent told you about the transfer, didn’t he?”
Jaed folded his arms and hunched. He found something on the floor to stare at, and did so with determination. “He said moving the Vizier would make it easier to control Rory. He didn’t suggest I tell Grytt. That was my idea. I think he wanted me to tell Rory. Or he thought I would. At the time, I just thought he was telling me his plans. Confiding in me.” Jaed closed his eyes. The bitterness was palpable. “I told Grytt because I was afraid to tell Rory. I thought she’d do something stupid.”
Thorsdottir couldn’t argue with the logic. She and Zhang could have your Highnessed until they were hoarse: if Rory thought the Vizier was in danger, she’d have done something. Grytt had saved everyone the argument and just . . . acted.
Thorsdottir sidestepped an upwelling of panic. It was one thing to suppose they were Gryttless on Urse. It was another thing to know it. Rory was down to her and Zhang for advice, and desperate enough to send to Jaed for help.
But if Jaed was
right, then the Regent hadn’t expected Grytt’s actions. Which meant he hadn’t expected Jaed to tell her. He’d expected Rory to find out, and to do something precipitous, and to be in a great deal of trouble, and thus at a disadvantage, which Jaed had spared her.
“You did the right thing,” Thorsdottir said.
Jaed’s eyes popped open. He stared at her as if she’d grown wings.
“I’m serious. If you’d told Rory, then you’re right. She’d’ve done something. Then the Regent really could arrest her. He may have even planned on that. But you told Grytt, and she—I don’t know what she did. I bet your father doesn’t, either. All he knows is that three of your security are dead, the shuttle’s missing, and Grytt and the Vizier are probably on it.”
“You think they’re alive?”
Thorsdottir thought about it. “Yes. No help to Rory, now—oh, stop it. That’s no criticism. They’re not dead. That’s most important. She’ll think so, too.”
Jaed’s brows drew together. He would be awful at poker, Thorsdottir thought. Every thought that went through his head traveled across his face. She hadn’t realized he had that many thoughts. It was an encouraging revelation.
“He must think Rory’s responsible. That she ordered Grytt to attack. That’s an act of war.”
“Until she tells him otherwise. Then it’s going to be your act of treason.”
He lifted his gaze and his chin together. “Better he blames me.”
Perhaps there was hope for Jaed yet. Thorsdottir directed her gaze through the porthole where Bielo hung, pale and monstrous. Two of its moons tracked across its face like mobile freckles. One of those might be Beo. Grytt and the Vizier could be on it. Ivar, or a part of him, certainly was.
“Listen. Rory showed me the files about Ivar. Your father’s been cloning him.”
Jaed gaped at her. “What?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No. No. That makes no sense.”
“It makes all kinds of sense. Clones have a short lifespan. Rory thinks the Regent means to marry her to one of them, wait until it dies, and then marry her to—now what?”
“My father said the marriage shouldn’t happen. Hers and Ivar’s. That it couldn’t. That we should try and stop it.”
“Your father said that to you? Then he does want you dead. Listen.” She lowered her voice and leaned closer. “Rory needs to be queen, Jaed. Which she won’t be unless she marries your Prince. Her second husband can be a jumped-up Minister’s son, sure. But not her first.”
Jaed looked as if he might incandesce spontaneously. “He encouraged me to make sure Ivar didn’t marry her.”
“Your father did?”
Jaed’s chin jerked up and down. The cords in his neck stood out like steel cables. “He said she was trying to use me. That she wanted me to rescue her from Ivar. He said—that the marriage shouldn’t happen. That if it did, Rory was his. Ivar’s.” Color flared on his cheekbones, then drained. “And if she didn’t, then . . . I could. You know.”
“Marry her and live happily ever after, with your father ruling through the both of you.”
Jaed looked at her miserably.
Thorsdottir weighed the merits of strangling him here and now, or letting Rory do it, and determined he might still serve a purpose. Besides, she was beginning to pity him. A child tried to trust its parents. It wasn’t Jaed’s fault his father loved power more than offspring.
“And how were you going to save Rory, then?”
“I had thought—maybe challenge Ivar. To a duel.”
Thorsdottir stared at him.
He flushed. “Look. I know I’m not the best fighter, I know you can beat me, but Ivar can barely lace his own boots.”
Thorsdottir found her voice again, and convinced it not to shout you’re an idiot. Instead, she kept it low and reasonable. “A duel to what, the death?”
“First blood.”
“And when the Prince used a proxy? Someone from security? Then what?”
Jaed blinked. “I—hadn’t thought of that.”
“That’s because you’re thinking royalty are normal people. They don’t fight, unless it’s each other. If you hurt Ivar, you’d be committing treason. Best case, prison for life. You actually kill him, you’re dead. But if Ivar’s proxy kills you, then Rory marries Ivar anyway, and he dies in a fortnight, and—”
“And then she marries Merrick. I am an idiot.”
Jaed’s expression was halfway between disgust and self-loathing. It did not look particularly comfortable from the outside. Thorsdottir imagined the inside felt much worse, but she had no leisure for kindness. Grytt was missing, and Rory in jeopardy, and both of those could be credited to Jaed’s poor judgment and paternal misfortune. He had not quite betrayed Rory, but he had been fool enough to let himself be used. He had also been her best hope for help. In Thorsdottir’s estimation, Jaed’s usefulness would end the precise moment his father learned he’d assisted in the Vizier’s escape, which had probably already happened.
She also knew that Rory did not measure people’s worth by their usefulness to her. Whatever Jaed’s errors—and there were several to which Rory would take offense—she would not leave him to his father’s mercy.
“Let me help her.” Jaed ground the words out. “Please.”
Thorsdottir pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t think Rory needs rescuing. I think you do.”
As it happens, Thorsdottir turned out to be only half correct.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
On Eggs And Omelets
Modern science, as it is practiced today, consists of two primary branches. The first, designated strictly on the basis of alphabetical serendipity, is alchemy, and concerns itself with the study of the transmutation, manipulation, and understanding of substances. The second is arithmancy, and focuses on understanding and manipulating the mathematical principles which underlie, according to the famous treatise by deMorales, “alle thinges grete and smalle in this Universe, fromme Aether to Man Hymeselff.” The k’bal say, simply, that arithmancy is the language in which the song of the universe is sung. Even the mirri, who deny the science of arithmancy and instead refer to it as magic, say it is the breath of the universe, present in all things. (We exclude here the opinions of both vakari and alwar, whose discovery by the multiverse’s human inhabitants is still some time in the future by this chronicle’s timetable, and whose opinions do not fit as well with our metaphor here.) Arithmancy is, therefore (and despite its place in the alphabet), considered the first principle science, the one on which all others rest. The egg, if you will, that comes before the chicken.
Alchemists, naturally, object to that claim. Not to its objective truth, but to the prejudices and attitudes which accompany the title. Because of arithmancy’s claim on first principles, alchemy is often seen as a lesser science, concerning itself with the mere physical manifestations of a more pure arithmantic truth. Some alchemists attempt to argue—the most eloquent of whom is M. Fantome—that it is the interaction with the physical, the intersection of matter and arithmancy, that is the most important course of study, since everyone, even arithmancers, must exist in their bodies (a fact which no arithmancer will dispute). Much energy, ink, and effort has been expended on this debate, from both sides, and to no real resolution; but the debate has produced an assumption, by the layperson, that alchemy and arithmancy do not overlap in practice. This is, of course, untrue.
The one fact on which both branches of science agree, however, is that the practical applications of arithmancy and alchemy do not play well together.
* * *
• • •
It was past midmorning and creeping up to early lunch when Rory finally declared breakfast finished, and herself and Zhang ready to meet with the Regent. The patisserie up-ring had proven to be out of the specific eclair she had wanted, which entailed a further sea
rch, culminating in the most populated café in the entertainment district, nearest the public voidport and, not coincidentally, a twenty-minute walk from the administrative offices.
The cumulative effect of the delay would, by Rory’s calculation, be nearly sixty minutes, from her exit from her flat to her arrival in the Regent’s office. Enough time, surely, for Thorsdottir to find Jaed, though Thorsdottir’s escape and presumed rendezvous were not the sole reasons for Rory’s delay.
She had a plan. One, she was sure, that Messer Rupert and Grytt would have disapproved of; but they weren’t here, and that left her fewer options.
Rory’s academic interests lay predominantly with arithmancy, and Messer Rupert had encouraged this; but he had been too conscientious to neglect the other sciences. She had done her time with alchemy, both theoretical and applied (having argued, while pointing at a skinned knee, that a Princess needs some knowledge of first aid). But her most useful alchemical knowledge came from history, and the various uses to which compounds and elements had been put, particularly by arithmancers.
The Vizier had encouraged her scholarship. He had also cautioned her against practicing arithmancy while alchemically altered. He could not, therefore, be blamed if she did so anyway, using as historical precedent a catastrophic incident in which Hermet, Vizier of what had then been only the Kingdom of Thorne, had attempted to revolutionize void travel by circumventing the requirement to tesser-hex through a gate. He had attempted to do so using a particular pharmacological substance which purported to expand consciousness, and thus facilitate his ascent (or descent, depending how one views it) through the many layers of aether. No one had ever found his vessel, the station from which it had launched, or the moon around which the station had orbited; the planetary system itself, absent a gravitational feature, had never quite recovered, necessitating the exodus from—which was a finer way of saying abandonment of—the homeworld.
Rory had no intention of tesser-hexing anywhere. Nor did she have access to Hermet’s alchemical resources. She had only what she had scrounged from the Vizier’s personal medical supplies, and her academic alchemy, to approximate the effects she required. She only needed to be able to hold a defensive hex while carrying on a conversation. It was a small requirement, compared to a tesser-hex. Standard battle-hexwork. But as she was no battle-arithmancer, it would require all her wits, intellect, and concentration in equal measure, and she was short of all three. Messer Rupert had never imagined a scenario in which she would be without himself and Grytt, and thus feel compelled to rely on the weapons remaining to her, though he would have, Rory was certain, protested the word weapon as a synonym for arithmancy.