by K. Eason
That was not what Samur wanted, or needed, to hear. Rupert leaned close to the hex-dish and lowered his voice. “He is a bit feral, sometimes, but he does not suffer from delusions, visions, or dementia. The fairy’s visit was real. He described her in detail too perfect to be invented.”
Samur’s eyebrows floated toward her hairline. “So what did she want? This fairy.”
“She had a message for me and for Grytt, which she could not deliver, Ivar says, because we would ask too many questions and her time was limited.” Rupert steepled his fingers. “Do you know about this Protectorate and these vakari?”
Samur’s lips pursed. “I do, though I have not encountered them personally. The political entity calls itself the Protectorate. The people call themselves vakari. Apparently they are quite advanced arithmancers with some strange cultural practices. We had heard about them through some of our other xeno allies—the k’bal have nothing good to say—but I believe the first actual contact was between a Johnson-Thrymbe long-hauler and a vakari military scout, near one of the J-T mining outposts. There were no shots fired, although things were tense until the translation hexes got communications sorted out.”
A year since the Protectorate had been common knowledge in the Consortium and the Merchants League! Civil wars did have a tendency to refocus national attention, but he would have expected some sort of reporting on the Confederation’s networks, or at least chatter on the public forums, on which he kept a lurking, curious eye. Even with the Confederation of Liberated Worlds’ careful curation of its media, something should have gotten through.
Unless, as he suspected, the doings of people—human and otherwise—on the other side of a civil war were just not as relevant to the Confederation’s network executives as whether or not the Tadeshi royalists would disrupt a convoy or attempt to retake a station. Let people think too widely, they might forget the immediate threats.
“The fairy told Ivar that the Protectorate are, in fact, Expanding.” He was careful to pronounce the capital letter, the same way Ivar had said it. “But that in so doing they are invading the k’bal territories and winning. And that . . .”
Samur waited with admirable patience for Rupert to finish. When he didn’t, when it was obvious that he had either misplaced the words or decided to forego them (and truthfully, he had not yet decided which), she snapped, “Rupert. And what?”
“We will be next. Human space. The Merchants League, Thorne Consortium, the Confederation, all the unaffiliated worlds. There is already armed conflict between the Protectorate and the Tadeshi royalists. The fairy says we need to prepare. You don’t seem surprised, Regent-Consort.”
“I’m not. I’m surprised you are. A political entity which thrives on expansion and does not mind using violence to achieve those ends is not likely to simply stop because they’ve reached a new boundary. You know how invasions work. We fought the war with Free Worlds of Tadesh, didn’t we, to stop them from doing the same thing to us?”
“We started that war.” There were layers to the collective pronoun. We, the Consortium. We, the duo of Rupert and Samur.
“Pre-emptively. We needed the momentum. You know they would have invaded us, if we hadn’t.”
He did know. He had been instrumental in the decisions leading up to war’s declaration. “Does that mean there are plans to pre-emptively attack the Protectorate? I ask, Regent-Consort, because the fairy predicted that we will lose a war with the Protectorate, should it come to that.”
“We—the Thorne Consortium and the Merchants League—won’t be alone in a conflict. There are already alliances in place. The other xeno interests I mentioned.”
Rupert reflected just how much he despised agentless, objective prose. Alliances meant negotiations, and sides, and effort. They did not just happen intransitively. “Yes. The fairy mentioned them, too. Piecemeal agreements between the Merchants League families and,” and here he drew breath, and recited the alien words exactly as Ivar had said them, “some of the tenju spacer clans and the alwar Harek Empire, which apparently consists of both planets and stations, though there are stray seedworlds of tenju and alwar and clans who are still operating independently.” He felt like an actor speaking lines in a foreign language.
Samur blinked. “You are well-informed. Or shall I say, this fairy is.”
Rupert strangled a laugh. He did not feel well-informed. Quite the opposite. He felt as if his head had been firmly buried in the garden, somewhere between the cabbage-sprouts and the compost heap. “The fairy says no alliance will save us. And by us, I mean all of us. The Confederation of Liberated Worlds, the Thorne Consortium, the Merchants League, and whatever organizational units these new xeno friends of yours have amongst themselves. She says, even if we unite, the Protectorate will rip the multiverse apart before they let themselves lose a war.”
Samur shook her head, a sharp, brief gesture. “That’s silly. First, multiverses don’t rip like cheap cloth. Second, there is no we. And third, the Confederation of Liberated Worlds is in the middle of human space. I think you’re quite safe there, on your little rainy sheep-planet of a capital, at least from the Protectorate. The royalists should be your concern, Rupert. They’re far closer to your borders.”
Like all terrestrial planets, Lanscot possessed a diversified climate based on latitude and seasonal orientation to the sun. That most of the planet’s landmass was concentrated in the middle third of the higher latitudes was a matter of chance, as was Lanscot’s location on the edge of Tadeshi space closest to Merchants League territory (which is to say: where the Tadeshi were very unlikely to attack from, having no bases there), or its primary agricultural contribution to trade. Samur’s problem with Lanscot was entirely that Rupert had chosen to live there over returning to Thorne.
However factual, none of that was relevant. What was, however: “Yes. About that. The fairy says that the Tadeshi have made new friends among some of what I imagine are supposed to be your allies, although she only said xenos. The Tadeshi royalists have acquired a weapon which will prompt the Protectorate into that full-scale warfare which destroys the multiverse as we know it.”
Samur frowned. The fern darkened to an ominous, boiling maroon. “Which allies? What kind of weapon?”
“The fairy was not specific.” Actually, the fairy had recited poetry, which Rupert was loath to repeat. So instead he summarized, perhaps too succinctly, “Something which will offend the Protectorate on a moral level.” No, that was not the right word. “A spiritual level. And, ah. Something about the eternal identity of roses, however they are named.”
Samur stared at him. “If Dame Maggie wishes to institute formal alliance talks between the Confederation and the Consortium, she should send an actual ambassador. But if this is a personal appeal for an alliance between the Consortium and the Confederation, it’s at least creative.”
Rupert could see Grytt on his periphery, standing in the open door. He supposed she had heard most of this exchange. Even from the center of the yard, even surrounded by sheep, her mecha audio receptors were sensitive. He could well supply her expression—the crossed arms, the scowl—without turning to look. He made a wait, don’t interfere gesture, out of his own viewing ball’s projective field, and heard her disapproving huh.
Rupert discarded formality on a rush of irritation. “This is not some kind of political pretense, Samur, nor some excuse on my part to re-establish communications between us. I am relaying the message as Ivar relayed it to me—”
“From a fairy. Honestly, Rupert. Just say you got your information from Maggie’s intelligence networks and have done.”
There was a time Rupert could have kept a blandly polite smile pasted to his face for hours, a useful skill he’d first developed under Thorne’s old king, Rory’s father, who had tended toward obstinacy and a surfeit of poor ideas, and which he’d later honed to a survival art on Urse with the Regent Vernor Moss, who had be
en ambitious and intelligent in equal, dangerous measure. Now Rupert crumpled that polite smile into a grimace and leaned close to the viewing ball.
“From one of the entities invited to your daughter’s Naming, yes.” It was hard to say if they had been one species; they had not matched, except in the apparent humanoid femaleness of their presentation. “You do recall their attendance, and the gifts they conferred.” All but the twelfth, who had whispered her gift to the infant Rory.
“I recall they attended because you invited them, and they were seen once and never again. Why should one of them reappear now, to Ivar of all people, bringing some doomsday warning? It seems very inefficient, doesn’t it? And rather fantastic.”
The floor creaked. Grytt was abnormally heavy, being a good portion mecha and therefore metal. It was a little alarming how quietly she could move.
Samur must have thought so as well; she recoiled as Grytt thrust her face over Rupert’s shoulder. The fern on Samur’s desk prismed through startlement, with a flash of embarrassment, before flaring straight into outrage.
“Grytt! I thought we were alone, Rupert, what is this—”
“Oh, stuff it, Samur.” Grytt had been Samur’s body-maid once, and before that a Kreshti reconnaissance marine. She had since raised one renegade princess and lost half of her body to an assassin’s bomb and survived the coup on Urse, and therefore suffered no anxiety about formality or diplomacy. “Weren’t you listening? Expansion’s a pretty word for invasion, and the fairy just said this weapon’s going be their reason to come after all of us. War isn’t good for anyone. You’re better positioned to get that information to the right people than we are, so do that, can’t you?”
Samur drilled Grytt with a look that, had it been directed at him, would have curdled Rupert’s stomach, and been followed by an argument. Grytt proved immune to both. Samur’s face, and fern, cycled through a flush of anger and embarrassment before settling into a sullen acquiescence. “Then what will your job be, pray tell?”
Grytt raised her remaining eyebrow. “Us? We’re just the fairy messenger service. Our job’s done.”
“Grytt,” Rupert said, in a warning tone that he anticipated would have no effect whatsoever on its object, but which would signal to Samur that she did not speak for both of them. He leaned forward, and arranged his features into what he hoped looked like earnest appeal. “We also need your help.”
Samur’s fern turned entirely orange, shot through with pink, at odds with her gentle head-tilt and her even more gentle, “More help?”
Rupert was not fooled. He watched her eyes, and they glittered, hard as obsidian and just as sharp.
“We, I—the Confederation—” Rupert paused. Requires was not the right word, despite its accuracy. Samur would not respond well to demands. “We would like to meet these xeno allies of yours.” The possessive pronoun was also not the correct word—the allies were Samur’s by association, because Samur had recently married into the Larish family (a second cousin, in no danger of inheriting the chief operating officer’s title, but still on the governing board), thus cementing an alliance with the Merchants League for Thorne. “We would be grateful if you could, perhaps through your husband, arrange a meeting.”
“I suppose the fairy told you about our treaties with the Harek Empire.”
Our. Rupert controlled a wince. “She did not. I surmised that Larish would secure a trading partnership with new markets and partners, whoever they might be. You just told me which one. So. Could you arrange a meeting with the Harek Empire?”
“We. You claim to speak for the Confederation? As its ambassador?”
Rupert was so very thankful Kreshti ferns did not register emotions across quantum-hex viewing balls. He composed his features in his best blandly sincere expression.
“Yes.”
Samur raised both eyebrows. Her smile grew teeth. “I have met the Confederation’s ambassador, Rupert. You look nothing like her. You used to be better at this. Lying to people, I mean.”
“I am out of practice.” Most of his negotiations concerned whose turn it was to do laundry, and Ivar and Grytt did not require polite prevarication. “And you have only met the Confederation’s ambassador to the Thorne Consortium. We don’t have an ambassador to your xeno allies yet, but I am certain that Dame Maggie will make the necessary appointment official, when she is informed of the fairy’s message, and the implications, and of a need for the post.”
“And you’re sure it will be you.”
“I am certain no one else will volunteer for the job.” He also intended to badger Dame Maggie relentlessly until she capitulated.
“The Vizier of the Confederation of Liberated Worlds.” Samur’s smile slipped again into a brief, genuine amusement. Then it scabbed over and fell off, leaving a crooked expression, drawn up tight at the corners. “And what is my daughter’s involvement in this?”
“We don’t know that she is involved,” said Rupert. “The fairy said nothing about it.”
“Of course she is.” Samur folded her hands neatly on the desk. The fern shifted into sunset hues. “As you have pointed out, Rupert: the fairies have been concerned with Rory since her birth. I cannot see some other reason they would send an emissary now, though why they came to you and not to me. . . .” Samur snipped off whatever else she meant to say. Suspicion sharpened her voice. “Has Rory returned to Lanscot?”
“No.”
“Then tell me where she is.”
Rupert side-eyed Grytt. “I can’t.”
Samur’s fern turned a terrible color, dried blood veined with necrotic green. “You can. You just won’t. She’s alone out there, Rupert. You left her alone.”
In fact, it was Rory (and Thorsdottir, Zhang, and Jaed) who had left him, Grytt, and Ivar to pursue a life of “freedom from all this” on the edge of the Verge. Samtalet was a self-sufficient mining colony, run by an elected stationmaster and council, which had a constant need for people with small ships to patrol its space for pirates and smugglers and, when encountering such persons, liberate the illegal cargo and return it to the proper authorities.
You are going to be a privateer, Rory.
More like salvagers who sometimes intercept smugglers.
I cannot tell your mother that.
No, Rory had said, entirely serious. You cannot.
“She isn’t alone,” said Rupert. “She has Thorsdottir, Zhang, and Jaed with her.”
But the point was not Rory’s solitude or company. The point was her preferences, which she had made very clear to Rupert and to Grytt (and, truthfully, to a lot of other people in several governments): She wanted to get away from politics. To live normally. To learn what normal even meant.
He added, “She is well removed from the conflict between the Confederation and the royalists,” he said, because he could tell Samur that much. “She wants to live quietly, out of the way, and just be a person, for once, and not a political symbol.”
“Oh, Rupert.” Samur’s demeanor softened, suddenly, and the lines around her eyes crinkled into genuine affection. “My daughter renounced her title, but that does not mean she isn’t a princess. Things happen to princesses, whether or not they want them to happen. Wherever that weapon is, Rory is, too. I know it. That’s a mother’s gift.”
“Samur’s probably right,” said Grytt, when the call had ended, and the quantum communications viewing ball had reverted to its neutral, spherical opacity. “Rory’s in the middle of whatever is happening out there.”
“Rory has proved herself to be adept at handling difficult situations.” Rupert rose from the chair and went to the middle of the living room. There, he stopped. He had to pack, possibly for a long time. He tried to recall if it had been his turn to do the laundry, or Grytt’s, and whether or not he could make the evening shuttle to the capital. He settled his best I am thinking, please do not disturb expression over hi
s features and began to compose mental lists of necessary items.
Grytt had no regard for his expressions, or for his signaled wish for solitude. She came and stood in front of him, where it was impossible to ignore her. It was that tesla eye of hers. Rupert was glad it was blue, and not red; but it made an unsettling combination, paired with her dark brown original eye, particularly when they were both glaring.
“I’m not worried about what Rory does. I’m worried about you, Rupert.”
“Me?”
“You.” She made a disgusted noise in her throat, turned on her heel, and stalked into the hallway. Rupert heard a door rattle in its track. She emerged shortly after, carrying a battered duffel over her shoulder. She dropped it on the floor at his feet. It was either an offering or a challenge, or perhaps some of both. “When you call Dame Maggie, tell her to expect both of us. You’re not going alone. Politics are dangerous.”
“But your sheep, Grytt.”
“That’s what Ivar and I were discussing out there.” She jabbed her chin at the open door, through which drifted the sounds of sheep as the dogs, assisted by Ivar, herded the flock back toward the pasture. “He can manage ’em. The lambing’s done, and we should be home by shearing-time.”
“You hate void-travel.”
“Yes, I do. And war, and sleet, and those little cabbages that taste like feet that you keep insisting on making me eat. But we all make our sacrifices.”
Rupert found himself unable to meet her eyes. “Thank you.”
“Huh. I’m just going along to make sure you come back here when it’s over. There’s no way I’m going to do your share of the chores.”
CHAPTER TWO
The G. Stein drifted, dribbling threads of plasma and small plumes of what had been atmosphere from a rather large hole in its engine core. Its registry declared it a civilian delivery vessel, owned by the Flora and Flowers Terrestrial Distribution (or FFTD), which was a subsidiary of the Sons of John Corporation, which in turn was a founding member of the Merchants League.