by K. Eason
Maggie appeared to be considering what Jaed had said, which frankly surprised him a little. The next words out of her mouth surprised him even more.
“All right. What do you suggest?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Life In The Tower
Arguably chief among a historian’s tasks is the recording of information, which must be collected and presented in such a way as to appear objective (these events happened) while still affording a framing narrative (and here is why and how events happened as they did). As such, a successful history makes note of the moments and decisions which contribute to major events. When discussing the union of Rory Thorne and Ivar Valenko and its consequences, then, it is necessary to examine the effects of the Regent’s so-called “tower treatment” of the Princess, which was designed to isolate her from external influences and events. In that, it was successful, to the letter of its intent.
Time, as has been noted, seems to pass at different rates for a subject, inversely proportional to how much the subject enjoys her current situation. There is a corollary, however, that there is never enough time for adequate preparation, no matter how bored, frustrated, or miserable one might be.
* * *
• • •
Rory, for her part, was not idle. She had three months and two days before Ivar’s eighteenth birthday to thwart the Regent by saving Ivar and avoiding any plans to marry her to Merrick. But the mechanisms of how she might accomplish that goal were not immediately evident.
She needed more information. She also needed to appear very much the leaf, and not at all the mantis-lion. She reasoned that the Regent would expect her to follow the accepted stages of teenaged outrage. She had already attempted defiance. Now she would appeal to another authority.
She demanded to speak to her mother.
The Regent, with great magnanimity, promptly delivered a quantum-hex unit to Rory’s prison-apartment, without any attempt to dissuade her or force her to come to a location of his choosing. That suggested two things: that he was confident he would hear whatever was said, and that whatever was said would have no effects on his plans.
Rory was certain the quantum-hex machine would have its own layers of spyware. Rory was also certain that her mother knew nothing of the Regent’s plot against Ivar. She was less sure of her mother’s complicity in the accelerated marriage arrangements. She wanted to believe that Samur did not approve of them, and that her acquiescence was an indicator of how little she could inspire the Consortium to intervene in Tadeshi affairs; but there remained the possibility, however slim, that Samur was genuinely in favor of the Regent’s plan. She had, after all, arranged the marriage in the first place.
So it was that Rory found her heart beating too fast and her stomach tying itself into knots. While she waited for the hexes to make their connection, she straightened the already orderly arrangement of her desk. Tablet here, squared and exactly one centimeter from the terminal keypad there. After a moment’s consideration, she set the Kreshti fern where it could be easily seen by the camera, and thus, by Samur.
She considered hexing her aura into good behavior; the fern was an unhealthy shade of chartreuse, with veins of cerise and tomato spidering along its leaves. She discarded that notion in the next moment. Her distress was expected; therefore, the Regent (or whomever he had reviewing the recording) should see exactly that distress.
The quantum-hex machine beeped. The viewing-globe, heretofore blank and black, acquired a small white dot at its center, which rapidly expanded into a profusion of bright light and blurriness that resolved, rather rapidly, into Samur’s likeness.
The Regent-Consort of Thorne sat behind her own desk, arranged almost identically to Rory’s, except for the prominent 2Ds of her children. Samur’s fern was a larger specimen and it, too, bore an unhealthy pale green hue over large parts of its leaves. But its accents were deep orange-magenta, bordering on plum: distressed, but resolved, with none of her daughter’s active anxiety.
Interesting, Rory noted; and chased that thought aside before her own fern’s leaves could change color.
Mother and daughter regarded each other for a moment, silent, taking note of ferns and desks and faces. Then Samur brought out a smile of sufficient brightness and enthusiasm that someone might fail to notice that her fern remained determinedly puce.
“Rory! My darling. How are you?”
Rory could count on one finger the number of times she’d been called darling. She did not need the fairy gift to tell her Samur was unhappy, and that Rory figured close to the center of that unhappiness.
She plastered her own smile into place. “Mother! The Regent says I’m to marry Ivar on his eighteenth birthday, and that is in just three months!”
Samur’s fern turned a little bit greener, like wheat newly sprouted in spring. “Yes, dear. I thought you might be calling about that. The Regent
is up to something, smug bastard
and I discussed it. We thought it best to move up the nuptials, in light of the
Lanscottar referendum
rumors about your romantic inclinations. Something about his younger son?”
“Oh, that.” Rory rolled her eyes, grateful for a chance at unfettered, unpolitical honesty, while her mind leapt toward the Lanscottar referendum and began making a list of questions she wanted to ask. “Jaed is my friend. I told the Regent as much.”
“Nevertheless.” Samur leaned onto her elbows, in a posture the Vizier would have recognized all too well. “Appearances matter, Rory, sometimes more than the truth.”
Rory let her smile wilt a little bit. She need not pretend enthusiasm; everyone watching knew better. “So I’ve been told.”
Samur’s eyes narrowed. She studied her daughter’s face, searching for signs of rebellion. “We have a treaty with the Free Worlds of Tadesh. You
don’t have the luxury of friendship
will marry Ivar, and you will be Queen. That is necessary to keep the peace between our nations.”
Rory’s fern flashed bright as sunset. She choked out one of those small, self-deprecating laughs that people expect to hear but no one ever truly believes. “I suppose, then, that maintaining appearances is why the Regent has been so generous with our new quarters.”
“New quarters?” Samur said it softly, as if repeating a new and strange word to be sure of its pronunciation.
Rory made herself look up just as slowly. “Oh yes. The Regent has found the most astonishing residence for us. It’s actually in the municipal complex. I suppose that’s more appropriate for a future Queen of Tadesh than our old apartments.” Rory leaned sideways, allowing Samur to see past her shoulder. “And it’s so much larger. Thorsdottir and Zhang can each have their own rooms now. No more need to share with Stary and Franko. They’re being quartered in the embassy now.”
The hardness of Samur’s smile spread like frost across glass until it reached her eyes. “That is certainly generous of the Regent.”
The fairy gift indicated otherwise, in syllables more profane that Samur was wont to utter.
Rory’s relief translated into a flash of temporary violet along the edge of her fern’s leaves. Her mother had not known about the move, then. Her pragmatic politics did not extend to her daughter’s imprisonment, at least.
But to Rory’s astonishment, Samur’s fern did not turn a cold analytical blue. Instead, it turned decidedly pink, with tremulous strands of orange. “I’m surprised the Vizier
why hasn’t he written?
has not kept me informed. He must be very busy.”
Rory could not quite control her flinch, nor intercept the stricken look she cast at her mother’s image. So her mother didn’t know about Messer Rupert’s arrest. That probably also meant she had no idea about what’d happened to Grytt, which made Rory suspect their escape had not gone well. (And indeed it had not; although the ill-luck
in this case was a matter of convenience rather than survival, having to do with the vastness of the void and Grytt’s claustrophobia, and the delay before the Lanscottar spy-skiff scooped them out of the dark.)
Rory rolled several lies around on her tongue, trying for the one least likely to flag the Regent as seditious behavior. Rory knew if she began shouting that the Vizier had been arrested, that he was missing, that he might’ve been involved in violence with Grytt, that the communications-globe unit would likely cease functioning.
Politics is about appearances; in that, it bears much in common with theatre arts.
Rory nailed a smile to her lips. Her fern, permitted the luxury of honesty, acquired a set of bitter black stripes, jagged and irregular. “He’s been busy, lately.” That sounded lame and unfinished. She could imagine the Regent leaning forward, finger hovering over the connection, ready to come crashing down. She groped for a plausible excuse and seized upon something Samur had (not) said. “He, ah, said it was something to do with the Lanscottar referendum.”
Samur stared at Rory’s fern. Her lips tightened, then drew together. Then the mask of Regent-Consort fell back into place, even as her fern melted into a browned butter color. “Then I’m certain he told you the same thing Regent Moss told me: it’s
serious
nothing to worry about.”
Rory was gratified to hear that Lanscot was distressing the Regent. She wondered if the timing had anything to do with Jaed’s sudden arrival at the Lanscottar embassy, and if the Regent’s plan for a fast marriage was indeed a response to Lanscot, or the other way around. Either way, it was interesting information, in the same way that curses were interesting, which is to say—beyond her ability to avert or affect.
Rory added it to the ever-expanding list. One’s options for action, when one is locked up, are somewhat limited. Rory was beginning to suspect that royalty in general involved some sort of confinement. She allowed herself to imagine a future conversation, herself with her daughter, discussing an arranged marriage. Her stomach clenched around the remnants of breakfast.
Samur looked like she, too, was regretting her last meal. Yellow and green crazed along her fern’s leaves, which had otherwise turned maroon. She sat back a little bit, as if trying for safer distance. The edges of her office bled in on the edges of the screen: the familiar paintings, the very edge of the window overlooking the koi pond, the watery winter cast to the light coming through the glass.
The familiar dimensions and colors conspired to make Rory’s throat tighten until she was not at all sure about swallowing. She decided a leaf could knot her fingers together and stare at them, but that she could not bite her lip. “I’m not ready to marry yet, Mother. I thought I’d have more time.”
Had Rory been watching her mother’s fern at that moment, she would have seen helpless fury sheet crimson over the leaves, until the whole plant looked as if it might combust. Had she been looking at her mother, she would have seen that same crimson darken Samur’s cheeks, tarnishing the warm bronze. But Rory was not looking at either mother or fern, and so heard only Samur’s controlled, cool, “You have three months, Rory. You will have to be ready.”
Truth, absolutely.
Here, the chronicler must interject a brief defense of Samur, against whom historians have already rendered a mostly unflattering judgement. The Regent-Consort was, above all, a woman of duty, dedicated to its fulfilment in the best manner possible, with little regard to personal happiness. Like all mothers, she wanted what was best for her daughter. But even though all her sacrifices, personal and political, had been made to ensure Rory’s future, Samur had always intended Rory to fulfill her royal duty at the probable expense of personal happiness. In other words, Samur’s notion of best was bound by the limits of what she believed was possible. Thus, if Samur has a fault for which history can condemn her, it is a lack of imagination.
Once the call had ended, Rory sat for several minutes, brow knotted, fists clenched. She lifted her face and stared at the elaborate light fixtures. There was almost certainly a colony of spybots up there. There were probably ’bots in every room, tucked in various nooks and crannies. This was not at all like the old apartments, which had masqueraded as Thorne sovereign territory. The Regent and his arithmancers could enter at any time, replace any ’bots she disabled. That was bad enough. But disabling the ’bots would also reveal her arithmancy to the Regent, and she could not afford to yield up that secret.
She could also not afford to be spied upon every moment of every day. There was always the lavatory, assuming some shred of propriety from Regent Moss; but even that sanctuary might be taken from her if she and Zhang and Thorsdottir began cramming in there together. There was always leaving notes under the soapdish, but that wasn’t practical for conversation, and certainly not for planning.
She needed to maintain both her leafhood and her privacy. As her gaze traveled around the living room, over the boxes and crates of recent relocation, she noted her harp in the corner. Knowing she was still being observed, she did not smile. She even got up from behind the desk and walked out of range of the fern, lest it give her away with its sudden profusion of pinks and purples and the deep, clear cobalt.
The Regent’s men wasted little time in coming to reclaim the quantum-hex globe. Rory withdrew to her harp as they did so, and began plucking a scale. When those same men returned an hour later, bearing the promised full set of Tadeshi law books, both in priceless hardcopy and in more practical annotated editions for Rory’s tablet, she did not even look up, much less thank them. That was a pointed, unaccustomed rudeness, and while she regretted it on some level, she thought the Regent would attribute that rudeness to pique, and congratulate himself on impressing upon her how impotent she was to affect her environment.
Rory continued to contribute to that impression when, after the law books had been delivered, she dragged the harp into the center of the room, with her back pointedly to the porthole and baleful Bielo, and continued to play.
And so the Regent’s spybots reported hours of footage of a girl bent over her harp, the law books apparently ignored. He supposed that, when confronted with the hedge of legal jargon, she had given up and found something more productive to do: hours a day with her back to baleful Bielo, tuning and playing her harp. The Regent had no ear for music, and no skill in that sphere, but he could appreciate the Princess’s technical precision, and the harp’s acoustic effects were pleasant enough. It was, at least, a more traditional pastime than her previous habits. It was proper, and far less worrisome than a Princess poring over law books would have been.
The Regent understood nothing of musical theory, nor of the overlap between arithmancy and music on at least a theoretical level. What is more fortunate for Rory is that his chief arithmancer also possessed little expertise in that area (and, as we have observed, possessed little inclination to admit any doubts or professional shortcomings to the Regent). The Princess’s surveillance seemed uninterrupted (according to the personnel whose sole task it was to monitor the Princess’s suite). The ’bots in her old apartments had ceased function almost at once, the fault for which the Regent assigned the Vizier; but he had harbored some suspicions about Rory’s arithmantic capacities. But since the ’bots in this apartment continued to function, the Regent concluded that the Princess possessed insufficient arithmantic talent to pose any threat.
This conclusion, while grounded in logic, was also incorrect.
The harp could, and did, achieve a sympathetic resonance with the ’bots. Through the careful, constant, invariable application of sympathetic tones, Rory gradually—over the course of several days—hexed her way past the audio and video, convincing them to report a girl and her harp and not the other doings in the room. The hexes were not invisible, but they relied, like the mantis-lion, on camouflage. Rory worried that the Regent’s arithmancer would discover them, but until he did, she had things to accompl
ish. One of those things was reading the law books. The other was not.
* * *
• • •
“I want to resume my martial training,” Rory announced. She had been curled in the largest chair, a tome of Tadeshi law cradled in her lap. Her tablet bore evidence of detailed note-taking, accompanied by several marginal drawings, one of which appeared to be a diagram of the atrium. Now she sat up, set book and tablet aside, and bounced to her feet. “I think if we move that couch over there, and shift the table back to the wall—what?”
Thorsdottir and Zhang had already shared a look, and were now both watching Rory with a mix of dread and distress that Rory had come to associate with variations on the theme of no, that won’t work, and here’s why, often accompanied by a Princess or a Highness for emphasis.
Rory pinned her attention on Thorsdottir, expecting any verbalization would come from that quarter; so she was startled when it was Zhang who said, “We aren’t entirely adverse to the idea.”
Rory blinked. Even though the fairy gift was most clear on Zhang’s statement’s veracity, Rory felt compelled to repeat: “You discussed this already? When?”
“We’ve been leaving notes in the lavatory,” Zhang said. “Under the soapdish. We thought you might’ve noticed.”
Rory opened her mouth and shut it again. She weighed the sting of betrayal—and it wasn’t, really, she knew that—against her pride in the stealth of her guards. “I didn’t. Well done.”