by K. Eason
She wasn’t even trying to lie. He did not need an aura-reader to know that. She knew where Jaed was. She was smug. How she had contrived to conceal Jaed, the Regent did not know. The tip advising him of Jaed’s residence with the Princess had been technically anonymous, originating from a public access terminal for which there was inadequate ’bot coverage, but the alchemists had found traces of his hair in the shower drain. The source had been correct. But Jaed had evidently vanished.
In another age, the Regent might have employed methods to persuade the Princess to share her knowledge. It was times like these he was most ambivalent about the price of modern civility.
“I am afraid,” he said slowly, “that my son is missing. Given the presence of an assassin, you understand my concern. Any information you could give me would be most welcome.”
The Princess sat back and folded her hands in her lap. “Of course, my lord. Should any information find its way to me past the men at my door, I will advise you at once.”
Another evident dismissal. This girl was truly remarkable. “While I am here, Princess,” the Regent said, “let us discuss matters of great importance to Thorne and the Free Worlds.”
Rory raised her brows. “More important than this threat to my royal person?”
The larger body-maid clamped her jaw so tightly the Regent thought she might crack a tooth. He sympathized.
“Sarcasm is an unattractive quality,” he murmured, “and one unworthy of the future Queen of the Free Worlds of Tadesh. What would your mother say, your Highness?”
“Whatever best served the interests of Thorne. But it seems premature to discuss a royal wedding, if that is what you meant. My eighteenth birthday is a little more than a year in the future.”
“The wedding will take place on Prince Ivar’s eighteenth birthday, Princess, not yours, to coincide with his coronation. And before you protest: I have already discussed the matter with my ministers, and with the Regent-Consort of Thorne, who has undoubtedly discussed it with her council. We believe it in the best interests of our people if we amend the treaty to accommodate Tadeshi law. You are familiar with it?”
Rory did not look as shocked as the Regent had anticipated. In fact, she did not look shocked at all. “Perhaps my lord would supply me with the necessary books and documents, so that I may familiarize myself with the finer details. I have noted that the turings in this suite have a very limited access to the public networks.”
The Regent chose to ignore that. “I will do so, Princess. Expect visits from the tailors, and reports from the Minister of Finance, detailing the preparations. You will be needed for consultation on some matters.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Rory bowed her head. “I will cooperate to the best of my limited capacity.”
The Regent stared at the crown of her head, and the blue gleam of Bielo reflected in her black braid, and revised his opinion of Rory’s resemblance to her mother. Physically, certainly; but where Samur was convincingly cooperative, Rory had clearly been permitted an excess of agency, the effects of which must be handled before her ascension to the throne.
“I am certain you will,” said the Regent. “Good evening, Princess.”
He took his leave under the distinct impression that, although he had come away best from the encounter—she would not have her improvised kitchen, nor freedom to leave her suite unescorted— he had not entirely triumphed.
* * *
• • •
Jaed Moss did not find his own confinement especially comfortable. Lanscot’s compound was among the older and least well-maintained sections of the municipal wing (by design), and smelled pervasively of wet sheep. It was also filled with Lanscottar who were suspicious in general of all persons Tadeshi, and in particular of him. It might have been easier if all he had to deal with were scowling eyes peering out of tartan-wrapped faces, but inside the compound, the Lanscottar dispensed with their woolen wraps, dressing in perfectly reasonable, unremarkable tunics and trousers like anyone else. Jaed endured full-facial scowls, beetled brows, and the flat, uncompromising unsmiles of every person in the corridor as he was escorted to his new quarters by a pair of equally unsmiling security.
“You stay here,” said the taller of the two.
“Dame Maggie’ll call for you when you’re wanted,” said the shorter one. Her tone suggested Jaed might languish a very long time.
“Thanks,” he said. “I mean it.”
The smaller escort had already turned her back on him. The taller one’s expression softened a jot. “You’ve got run of the place,” she said. “If you want it. We’ve got a rec room, and a little gym. There’s a terminal in there, has maps and mealtimes on it. You’re not a prisoner.”
It was a kind thing to say, if not entirely true. Jaed thanked her again, and resolved to be a model not-really-prisoner and stay in his quarters.
The following afternoon, the first reports of Rory’s relocation to the Regent’s compound surfaced on the station news reports. Jaed watched the footage of Rory, Thorsdottir, and Zhang marched through Urse surrounded by a hedge of his father’s security, while the reporter alleged an assassination plot and extolled the cleverness of the Regent’s security in having foiled it. The Princess, said the reporter, had requested relocation, and the Regent had extended his personal hospitality.
Jaed thought his father must be slipping, if he hadn’t concocted an entire conspiracy already, complete with names, to blame for this alleged assassin. Assassination attempts played well on Urse since the death of King Sergei, but even so, a lack of specific details hurt credibility. Either his father didn’t care, or—no. That must be it. His father didn’t care. He didn’t think the details would matter, because no one would question whatever tale he told.
It was all very vague. Jaed began to suspect his father had acted quickly, before he’d had a good story in place. But then the following day, the newsfeeds were quite overtaken by announcements of the upcoming nuptials, three months hence, between Princess Rory Thorne and Prince Ivar Valenko. No further mention was made of the assassination attempt. Clearly the Regent was counting on the excitement of a coronation and a wedding to keep the station entertained and distracted, though from what, Jaed had no idea.
That evening, seeking his own distraction, Jaed ventured exactly far enough from his quarters to request of the kitchen staff a bottle of Lanscottar single malt. The cook, a closet romantic and ardent follower of the Jaed and Rory romance, gave Jaed one of his better bottles along with his best sympathetic expression.
Jaed seemed to be feeling rather sorry for himself. While it is not a chronicler’s task to guide a particular interpretation on the part of the audience, it may be appropriate here to advocate on Jaed’s behalf. He regarded himself as essentially a prisoner—kind words aside—to a people to whom he was at best a political hazard, and for whom he might also be a hostage. He reckoned his worth to his father was purely political, and that Dame Maggie was politically ruthless enough to spend him if the situation required it. So if the reader finds themself impatient with Jaed’s demeanor, well, perhaps they might dredge up some sympathy. This historian would not waste time reporting a man’s self-pity unless it becomes something more interesting and germane to our chronicle.
The following morning, Jaed awoke with a headache and an epically foul taste in his mouth to the beeping of his terminal. He staggered, squint-eyed and graceless, across the room, intending to swat the machine to silence. Instead, his hand slipped and turned it on. It was then that Jaed realized the beeping was not an errant alarm, but rather an alert of a special broadcast. He noticed both the broadcast’s origin—not Urse’s news network, but rather the Outer Colony Independent Link—and the content in the same ragged, indrawn breath.
Lanscot Referendum Passed by Unanimous Vote
The name was misleading, as the report soon revealed. The referendum wasn’t a political act loca
l to Lanscot, but rather a collective proclamation, of which Lanscot was only the largest and primary signatory. There were at least a dozen others (truthfully, Jaed stopped reading after the first few), all colonies and stations on the fringes of Tadeshi influence, all victims of annexation. Only three of the signatories—the Kymric, Zhenovian, and Tzoumi, who also had violent, difficult histories of assimilation into the Free Worlds—even maintained a presence on Urse.
Jaed knew that the Ursan newsfeeds would be broadcasting their own version of the story, in which the Lanscot Referendum would be reduced in significance to merely a political gesture by ungrateful malcontents. And because he knew his father, Jaed suspected that the accelerated wedding, and perhaps even Rory’s arrest (he, at least, would call it what it was), was a result of the referendum, which his father would’ve known about before any public broadcast got hold of it. Any non-local broadcasts were held at least one Ursan day before release on the station. Jaed reasoned Maggie must have dispensation to get hers so promptly.
Jaed wondered if Maggie had known when the Referendum was to be issued before Rory’d asked for his asylum with Lanscot. Or if Rory had known. Or if everyone in the multiverse figured things out before he did. And then, because he was not the same young man Rory had approached in a gym some months before, or even the same young man who’d gone a few rounds with Lanscottar single-malt the previous evening, he turned off the report, took a shower and two painkillers, and dressed. Then he accessed a map of the embassy on his terminal and figured out where Maggie’s office was and, after a moment, decided against calling ahead to ask for a meeting.
Sometimes surprise is a strategy.
There weren’t any guards outside of Maggie’s office. There was only a lone secretary who got up and scuttled into a side passage, intent on some errand, either unaware of Jaed’s approach or assuming he would wait in front of her desk until her return. He didn’t. He went to Maggie’s door and banged the flat of his palm on the metal. Then he looked up where there should be a camera over the door—there was—and stared at it.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the secretary coming back with a couple of what must be security at her heels. He had a moment’s sick certainty that he’d been, what was it Rory called him? Right, politically naive, which was a nice way of saying stupid, and that he was either going to be dragged bodily back to his quarters or perhaps thrown out of the compound altogether.
Then the door to Dame Maggie’s office whisked open.
“Well,” she said, “Come in, then. I wondered when you’d show up.”
Jaed wasn’t sure what he expected to find in Maggie’s office. Something . . . neater. His father’s office was ordered. Spotless. Possessed of portholes. This office was none of those things. There were tablets and styluses piled haphazardly on one end of the desk, with a small Kreshti fern from Rory’s previous visit perched on top. One of the massive woolen wraps was half-draped, half-fallen from a chair in the corner. A 2D ’cast of Lanscot hung on one bulkhead, the planet revolving on its axis, its constant cloud-layer splitting and sealing again over surprisingly bright slivers of ocean or glimpses of the habitable landmass, a collection of large islands in the cooler end of the northern hemisphere’s temperate zone.
And, most fascinating, there was a quantum-hex globe perched on the edge of the desk.
Jaed sidled up to it. Every quantum communication device was linked to one or more others specifically and exclusively by a series of hexes that bored holes in the fabric of the void, and was of sufficiently advanced arithmancy that it might as well have been magic. Such globes were common enough in the municipal offices, but all of them were registered to Urse and monitored. This one was not one of those globes. It was smaller and a bit scuffed on the surface, as if it’d shoved in the bottom of someone’s rucksack and smuggled onto the station (which it had).
Jaed jabbed his chin at it. “That’s. Um.”
Dame Maggie eyed him. “A quantum-hex communications globe.”
“I was going to say against regulations, but I suppose that’s the point. This one isn’t standard Ursan issue. Just how many other globes does that link to, and where are they?”
Maggie leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “You don’t expect me to answer that, surely. What do you want, Jaed Moss?”
“My terminal woke me up this morning with an OCIL report about a referendum. They’re saying it’s a declaration of independence. Is that true?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”
“I think you gave me asylum on Rory’s asking, and you wouldn’t have agreed if there wasn’t something serious going on, something that is better served by my survival than my capture and execution as a spy or whatever charges my father came up with as an excuse. This referendum. I just don’t get what help you think I’ll be.”
Maggie’s expression softened. “Your father’s a hard man. We know that as well as anyone. You’re here specifically because Rory Thorne asked a favor. That’s all.”
The Kreshti fern, visible in his periphery, turned profoundly green.
Jaed chewed over a retort that would have felt good to say and probably landed him back in his quarters, this time with a guard on the door. Then he dumped the wool wrap onto the floor, dragged the chair in front of Maggie’s desk, and sat down. “I know Lanscot wants independence. But there’s no way my father’s going to give up a planet. You know that. The Free Worlds of Tadesh has a shortage of planets with actual biospheres, and the stations need the resources. Rory won’t be able to get you your freedom. Even when she’s Queen. No matter how big a favor you think she owes you for saving me.”
“The Princess said you were sharper than you seemed. Oh, peace, lad.” Maggie held up a hand. “It’s not an insult. What were we supposed to think of you, being your father’s son, trotting around in Merrick’s shadow?” She plucked a data crystal from her terminal and laid it on the desk between them. “Have you read these files?”
“If those’re Ivar’s medical records, then no, I haven’t read them, but I know what’s in them.”
“Treason, that’s what.” Maggie turned the crystal between her fingers. “It’s the sort of thing that could start a revolution. A rebellion, among some of the outer colonies. It’s the sort of thing that takes down dictators. It’s the sort of thing we can use, if your father decides to fight back on the referendum.”
“That’s not why you gave me asylum. You didn’t have those files yet when Rory asked. And it’s not why you held the referendum, either, because something like that’s been in planning for a long time.”
“Right on both counts.”
“Then why?” Jaed wanted to stare at his hands. Instead, he stared at Dame Maggie. “Do you intend to . . . what, trade me to my father? Use me as a hostage? Don’t look at me that way, Dame Maggie. You’re a politician. Though I think I should tell you, I’m not worth much to him these days.”
Maggie smiled. She was a woman in shades of brown—medium skin, darker hair, lighter eyes—but her smile was wide, white, and startling. “Oh, I think that’s not true. I’ve been watching you lately, carrying on with the Princess.” She paused, in case Jaed wished to protest the term. When he said nothing, her smile tightened. “I thought maybe her request to give you shelter was a matter of sentiment. But then . . .” She leaned over and dragged the quantum-hex globe over a few centimeters, until it had edged into the expanse of desk between them. “Then I got a call from one of the other globes linked to this one. That globe’s on a ship we have out there on the fringe of this system.”
Jaed examined that knowledge with careful mental fingers. Urse’s astronomical neighborhood was large, he knew that. Vast distances from the central star to the rocky, aetherless inner planets to Bielo and Cherno. The tesser-hex gate lay even further out, in the same plane and just past a belt of asteroids that must’ve been planets before some cosmic catastrophe
. Galactic law and good sense said any ship through the gate announced itself, via automated transponder, so that local ships (and Urse) knew who was in the neighborhood. If the Lanscottar had a ship out there Urse didn’t know about, that was—well. A lot closer to armed conflict than Jaed had supposed.
“Big ship?”
“Oh, no. Little. Surveillance skiff. They intercepted a Tadeshi shuttle running for the gate. It’s a good thing that shuttle didn’t get to the gate, mind you. You don’t tesser-hex without a turing to do the math, even if you are an arithmancer.” She waited while Jaed thought that through.
Jaed side-eyed the fern. It was smugly cerulean, with striations of violet. Not a hint of mendacious green.
“The Vizier.” His heart stuttered hopefully on Rory’s behalf. “And Grytt?”
The fern deepened its self-satisfied blue. “It’s her recommendation I’m taking, telling you all this, and only because you came to me, first. To answer your initial question: the referendum was intended as a gesture. You’re right: we were counting on Rory’s influence once she ascended the throne. Now this”—she jabbed at the data crystal—“suggests she won’t get the chance to help us. But this also means we have actual leverage.”
“Maybe. But you only have until the wedding if you want to act on it. After that, my father will have the Consortium’s warships to draw on.”
“Technically, by treaty, he has them now.”
“No. He doesn’t. His marriage to the Regent-Consort is provisional. It’s a treaty to stop the war, that’s all. The full alliance doesn’t happen until Rory marries Ivar. That’s why she has to marry him.”
Dame Maggie sat up straight. Her fern flickered through the spectrum of surprise. “How do you know that?”
“Rory told me.” Rory had explained, at length and with detail, the conditions of her future marriage, during one of their many public strolls through Urse. Jaed could recall with perfect clarity the way her hand clenched around his arm, and that bright, false, furious smile she deployed like a weapon. The gossip forums were full of those photos, Rory looking happy and amused, when Jaed had known she was furious and frustrated and leaving marks on his skin through his sleeve. “I think we both know who’s going to be running the Free Worlds after Ivar’s coronation. That means we can’t let it happen.”