by Ken Scholes
Felip nodded. “I certainly will, Lord Czar.”
“Thank you,” Frederico said. I have become grateful for what was once my due. He stood, bowed his head slightly, and when the steward did the same, Frederico did not ring the dismissal bell. Instead, he walked the steward to the door. “Also,” he said, “I want you to extend a private dining invitation to Senator Tannen. Pay his house steward handsomely for knowledge of the senator’s favorite dishes and spirits. Be certain our chefs can accommodate before the invitation is offered.”
Felip nodded. “Yes, Lord Czar.”
He locked the door behind the steward and went into the bed chambers. He pulled the lockbox from beneath his bed and spun the cipher into it. He drew out the silver crescent and held it to his ear. “Amal?”
He heard the harp and then the voice. “I am here, Ghost.”
“You can teach me now,” he said, seating himself upon the stool.
He heard the delight in her laugh. “You have it there now?”
“I do, Lady Y’Zir.”
For an hour, she talked slowly and quietly to him as he picked notes out upon the strings. It was only later, after she’d left for afternoon lessons—and while he was checking intelligence reports for any news of House Y’Zir—that he realized what the tune was she had carefully walked him through.
It was the song she played upon the night they first met.
He smiled and signed papers authorizing three months of expenses and a redoubled effort to find this woman who brought music to him.
* * *
They took their dinner in the private dining room and Frederico waited until they were well into their second bottle of kallaberry wine before he asked his favor. The meal had been perfect—broiled salmon drizzled with a white lemon sauce and decorated with asparagus spears across a bed of peppered rice. Crabbed cucumber salad and garlic steamed mushrooms preceded it and Frederico knew that a pear tart followed, once the kallaberry wine ticked their appetites back to life.
He smiled at the senator. “I have a favor to ask of you. It relates to the matter of my need for an Espiran bride.”
Frederico saw the hope come alive in Tannen’s eyes. Certainly, the senator had to wonder why he’d been granted this rare dining experience. “Certainly, Lord Czar. Name it. It is no favor—it is my honor.” Smiling, Tannen bowed his head.
Frederico returned the bow. “I wish to purchase an estate in Espira. On the coast.”
“I am certain we can find a place suitable for you, Lord Czar. Have you met someone of interest there?”
Frederico shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not there. It is on behalf of someone else. A Lady Amal Y’Zir. But it would be more proper for the deed to reflect her father’s name—Lord Raj Y’Zir.”
The senator’s brow wrinkled with thought. “I’m not familiar with those names.”
“They are from abroad,” Frederico said. “I’m not sure of Lady Y’Zir’s arrival but I will tell you when I know. It will need a good steward—someone reliable and discreet.”
He watched the governor’s eyes and when the understanding bloomed in them, it was bright. “I understand, Lord Czar.”
“There will be generous remuneration for Espira,” Frederico said quietly, “and for you of course. I have a hunting manor for you in the Gaming Wood.” He paused. “And once her residency is unquestionable, I will make proposal and settle this matter of an Espiran bride.” He raised his glass and his eyebrows. “What say you, Senator?”
There was the briefest hesitation before Tannen smiled and raised his own glass. “Espira is ever yours, Lord Czar.”
“Thank you, Tannen. Because of the sensitive nature of this matter I will arrange my gratuity with care.”
“I understand completely, Lord Czar.”
And with that, Frederico clapped and a servant appeared with the steaming pear tart.
* * *
Frederico lay in his bed feeling the sweat dry on his skin. “I bought you a house today in Espira,” he told her.
She giggled. “A ghost house?”
He smiled. It had become a game between them. “Yes,” he said. “On the coast of my ghostly empire.” Images of palm trees and white sands flashed behind his eyes. “It’s always warm there.”
“Like home,” she said, “but not an island.”
“Not an island,” he agreed.
She sighed and the sound of it was like soft hands upon his skin. “I suppose you think you’ll carry me away from my father’s tower in a large white ship after paying him some enormous dowry?”
“I suppose,” he said.
“And what if he refuses my hand?”
Frederico stretched and stifled a yawn. “I do not think he will. But if he did, I would persuade him otherwise.”
Amal laughed. “You do not know my father.”
“And he does not know me.”
She was silent for a moment and when she spoke, the play was gone from her voice. “Who are you truly, Frederico? I call you ‘ghost’ and make light of your empire but I’ve been through the library and I’ve found nothing. Where do you live? Where are these nine seas you sail in search of me? And are you truly as wonderful as you seem or are you just some whispering memory of a Younger God long dead and captured within this bauble I’ve found?”
He closed his eyes. “If I am wonderful, I think you’ve had a part in making me so. And I could ask the same of you. I’ve spent enough gold searching you out to finance a regional government for two years. I’ve found no island paradise. No silver tower. No record or recollection of the name Y’Zir in any of a thousand places I have searched. Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder if you’re not the ghost.”
“Maybe we both are,” she offered.
“Perhaps. If so, then you’ll not mind my ghost house in Espira.”
She laughed. “And why would I live in Espira rather than with you in your ghost palace?”
He’d told her little of his wives; truth be told, he’d not thought of them since meeting the girl. And he’d not spoken of Jazrel at all. That loss seemed a private thing to him or at the very least, something to share when their eyes could meet and their hands could touch. “Eventually,” he told her, “you would live here with me. But these matters are...complicated.”
Amal sighed. “I would imagine so. Being an emperor would be frightfully complex, I should think.”
“It has its moments.”
“So does being the daughter of a wizard.”
Frederico laughed. “I’m certain that it does.”
“You know I’ve asked my father’s mechoservitor about your empire and your nine seas.”
“His mechoservitor?”
“His metal man,” she said. “Surely you have mechanicals in your empire?”
A metal man? Frederico thought about the handful of mechanicals he’d seen. Just last week, he’d seen a bird made of metal that could fly and recite verse. “A few,” he said. “Mostly small things. Nothing so elaborate as a man.”
“He is a wealth of knowledge beyond even our library. I see him infrequently as he’s often in the basements about my father’s work.”
“What did he say?”
She chuckled. “He made inquiries of where I’d heard such nonsense. I told him I’d read it in a book somewhere but could not remember which.”
She also hides me from her world, he thought, and he wondered why that impulse was strong within them. Initially, they might think it madness but it would only take a moment to draw out the crescent and prove the truth of it to any who wished to know. Perhaps we know it changes when it becomes more than the two of us.
When she yawned and stretched, he heard the sound of sheets moving across her skin and heard the pull of sleep in her voice. “Talk me to sleep, Frederico my Czar, and tell me about my house in Espira.”
Yawning himself, Frederico rolled to his side and began describing the estate with its gardens and butterflies, green pools and white sands.
When her breathing became slow and steady, he smiled. “Dream sweetly, Amal my love,” he said quietly into the crescent. Then, carefully, he lowered it into its velvet-lined box, closed the lid and pushed it back beneath his bed.
* * *
Frederico did not announce his visit to the Ministry of Social Behavior but somehow they expected him and ushered him into the Minister’s office immediately.
Pyrus was there was well, his anger barely concealed. “This is most irregular, Lord Czar,” he said. Still, he stood and bowed his head.
“Quite out of the ordinary,” the Minister of Social Behavior agreed, following Pyrus’s lead. He looked more nervous than angry and Frederico noted that.
“It may have been once,” Frederico replied, “but perhaps you’ve noticed some recent changes in what was once deemed regular and ordinary.” He smiled and went straight to the topic of his visit. “I want to see the Lunar Priestess. I’ve had a month of excuses and I’ll have no more. Broken or not, ill or not, raving or not, I will see her and I will interview her privately.”
Though it was not his ministry, Pyrus spoke first. Frederico noted this as well. “But—”
The Czar raised his hand, cutting him off. “Minister Pyrus, is what I ask beyond my right as your Czar?”
There was fire in his eye but the old man bit his tongue. “Anything you ask, Lord Czar, is within your right.”
“Very well.” He turned to the Minister of Social Behavior. “Take me to her then.”
The Minister glanced to Pyrus, then back to Frederico. “Yes, Lord Czar.”
They climbed wide and sweeping marble stairs and strode down paneled halls decorated with black and red roses of Empire, past portraits of the royal family. In the eastern ward, they climbed the corner tower to the midpoint and paused at a walnut door.
The Minister inserted a key and turned the lock while Pyrus tried and failed to disguise the anger on his face. Frederico looked to each of them, then looked to the captain of his Crimson Guard. “I will leave when I’m finished. I will ring if I have urgent need of you.”
The captain saluted. The ministers inclined their heads.
Frederico opened the door and slipped into the brightly lit room, pulling it closed behind him.
It was a wide open space with a comfortable bed and a small table, a wardrobe and glass-paned doors that opened onto a caged balcony garden. In the garden, a middle-aged woman with graying red hair sat upon a simple wood chair and hummed at the butterflies that lifted and landed from her naked skin.
Frederico found himself blushing at her nudity and he turned away from her. “Forgive my intrusion, Lady, he said. “I did not know you were indecent.”
She laughed. “I am never indecent.” The laughter melted into a smile as she stood. He glanced towards her as she turned to face him and saw continental lines of strength and islands of softness in the curving of her body. He looked away again, a blush rising once more to his cheeks. “You are the Weeping Czar Frederico,” she said.
He tried not to notice her breasts. “I no longer weep,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Then it’s begun.” She stopped then took another tentative step closer to him. “They’ve given it to you and you’ve spoken into it.” Her eyes were bright with tears. “It spoke back to you and now you are the Last Weeping Czar.” She smiled sweetly at him.
There was something compelling and confident in the priestess’s words. Frederico felt something like curiosity rising within. Or perhaps it was fear. He heard traces of it in his voice. “What has begun?”
She took another step forward. “The Year of the Falling Moon,” she said. “Just as Saint Carnelyin told us.”
She started humming again, swaying now to the music. Outside, the butterflies danced with her and Frederico blinked at it all and waited for her words to register. Carnelyin. The storyteller with his fanciful journey to the moon. He opened his mouth to protest, to tell her that the moon was the poisoned garden of gods long fled or extinct, but he was suddenly caught by the song she hummed. He knew it. “Where have you heard that song?”
Her body rippled like a river bathed in light. “He brought it back with him along with the crescent. But you should know this. Your family financed his expedition.”
Frederico bristled at the nonsense of her words. “There has never been a Czarist Lunar Expedition.”
She smiled. “There has, Frederico. It’s the best kept secret of your family and the source of its weeping.” Her voice lowered now. “Soon the time for secrets will be past. The Moon Wizard is awake and the end of an age is upon us.”
The Moon Wizard. He’d read Carnelyin’s story as a boy—most boys had—but it had been many years. He did not remember reading anything about a Moon Wizard. But he did remember something else. It came to him accompanied with laughter and a playful assertion. “I am Amal Y’Zir,” she had told him one night long ago, “daughter of the Great Blood Wizard, Raj Y’Zir.”
He looked at the priestess. She still hummed the song—the one he’d slowly learned upon the harp under Amal’s tutelage—and she danced in quiet supplication. “Did Carnelyin name this Moon Wizard?”
She shook her head. “He did not. And that first, smaller edition of his tale was gathered and burned.” She stopped dancing and their eyes met. “He himself was gathered and burned eventually,” she told him in a sober voice, “when he refused to recast his perilous tale at the behest of his Czar.”
Frederico shook his head. “He died in retirement in Espira, a man of great honor.”
“He died in a fire in some basement furnace beneath your palace,” she said. “Branded a traitor for telling the truth.”
Frederico swallowed. Something in her words held him and demanded that he ask the next question. “What truth did he tell?”
“Sit with me,” she told him, “and I will share his gospel with you.”
Frederico looked to the door then back to the woman. They are words, he told himself. Hearing could not hurt him. But already, this woman struck a chord within him that resonated as true as any upon his grandmother’s harp. He’d studied enough of the Lunarists to know they believed a tragic end awaited a faithless world but he’d never cared to know exactly why and what kind of end. It was enough to know that it hung upon mysticism and bordered on madness.
But now, a hunger for the words rode him and he walked slowly to the chair she pointed to.
Folding his hands into his lap, he sat. “Teach me about the moon,” he said.
She smiled and in her smile, Frederico saw damnation and salvation dancing together to the strains of a familiar tune.
* * *
The servants began delivering the manuscripts and documents even before he’d returned to his rooms. He saw them filing past out of the corner of his eye as he silently took his lunch in the small dining room near his suite.
He’d waved Pyrus and the others away when he’d left the priestess’s quarters. And the black clouds that gathered within him must have migrated to his face for they did not ask. The Minister of Social Behavior looked concerned. Pyrus looked bemused.
That bemusement had become something else when Frederico started listing off the books and records he wished brought to his rooms. He couldn’t tell if it was the tone of voice with which he issued the commands or if it was the documentation itself that he wished to see but Pyrus had looked almost eager to accommodate him.
And now a stream of men and women flowed into his rooms with arms stacked high, then left for yet more.
He chewed his orange-soaked pheasant slowly and thought about the Gospel of Felip Carnelyin. He could not find the good news in it but he knew it was because the finality of her words was still sinking in.
If her words were true then the world sat at the edge of a great change and there was nothing that could be done for it. And he had played a part in it. He’d sought to cover his shame by blaming the Lunarists for Jazrel and in so doing, he’d uncovered an older shame—the root of his fami
ly’s tears.
He’d spoken into the silver crescent and it had answered him. He had wept into it and something like joy had found him.
He’d gone in search of truth and found sorrow waiting in its place.
Suddenly angry, Frederico swept the platters and goblets from his table. They clattered against the walls and floor, causing the servants to jump and yelp at his sudden violence. It surprised everyone, including him.
He stood, mumbled an apology, and fled to his rooms and the mountains of paper that awaited him there.
He did not bring out the silver crescent that night. Instead, he kept the lamps up and launched his research. The priestess had given him a long list of places to start and he went to those first, finding her words confirmed with each scrap he read.
The Ministry of Intelligence had been careful, certainly. There were no blatant confessions, no straightforward accounts. But he found what he sought—verification of the priestess’s words—in the nooks and crannies of it all. In budget lines and meeting notes, in veiled references and coincidental dates from a thousand years before.
Initially, there was wonder to be found but beneath it, shame. And as the clues fell into place, the shame gave way to dread.
That dread grew within him until finally, as the sun grayed the eastern sky, it spilled over again into anger and he went at last to the silver crescent.
“Are you there?” he asked it, rubbing his eyes as if somehow that effort might erase what he’d learned. He heard stirring and then a sleepy voice.
“Frederico?”
He didn’t answer at first. Amal’s voice had an edge of panic to it. “Frederico? Are you there? Where have you been? I fell asleep waiting for you.”
“How old are you?" he finally asked. He could hear the flatness in his voice. “How old are you really?”
“Nineteen,” she said. “But I’ve told you that before.”
She couldn’t be nineteen and he knew it now. “And your older sister?” His voice was sharper now than he intended it.