He chuckled, and for the first time it seemed to Jewel that he truly relaxed, leaning back in his chair and assuming a less than military posture. “To tell you the full truth, I expected your family would attempt to twist our arms for an even greater share of the armenium to celebrate your wedding. It never occurred to me that they might be the victims of extortion.”
Jewel had been smiling until Farl spoke these last three words. “It’s not extortion. They want a service from me—one which they believe will profit them tremendously. You also want a service from me. Is it so unreasonable to expect you to do something for me in return?”
The warmth leached out of the justiciar general’s face and he returned to his rigidly erect military posture. “Now you sound like the Cartelites who raised you.”
The swirling tattoos on his face made him look genuinely frightening.
“I may not like everything about my culture,” Jewel told him, “but I am a Cartelite and I’m not going to act as if I’m ashamed of that. And control of money is one key element of true freedom. I’m very worried about my independence, Justiciar General. So let’s start there, shall we. What restrictions will be placed on my movements if I marry Kole? I have never met the man despite all the years we two have been betrothed. I’ve asked myself a hundred thousand times why that would be the case and the only answer I can come up with is that someone on your side expects us not to like each other. After all, my parents thought they had the right to marry me to him regardless of my wishes, so this concern could only come from your people.”
There was no lessening of the rigid formality in Farl’s tone or posture generated by the mention of Kole. If anything, he became even more martial in his response, as if he were reluctant to share any personal or meaningful insight into Jewel’s betrothed.
“As a young man, there were serious concerns about hampering Lieutenant Delling’s education. He is extraordinarily smart and physically capable.”
Jewel already knew that. Every three standard months for as long as she could remember, she and Kole had exchanged vid messages. Most of Kole’s recordings were devoted to stiff narrations of his academic and athletic successes and his hopes to continue achieving them. The vids hadn’t endeared him to her.
Farl continued talking. “A trip to the Cartel Worlds would have significantly damaged his prospects. It was clearly better for everyone that he pursue his education uninterrupted.”
Jewel couldn’t even justify that statement intellectually, much less emotionally. “And somehow that is supposed to explain why I couldn’t visit?”
She watched the justiciar general’s response quite closely and the only reaction she read in his face was confusion over her question. “I sense some personal hostility in your response, Jewel. Please understand that I was not personally involved in any of these decisions. I didn’t even meet Lieutenant Delling until earlier this year. But the reasoning of the House Empyreals appears valid to me. They owed it to the House and to the Hegemony to push the young man to achieve the highest levels of excellence of which he was capable—and at the time that appeared to be quite high. This would naturally benefit you and your family as well. The higher your husband’s talents and accomplishments enabled him to rise, the greater his and your shared prestige throughout the galaxy.”
The Armenites had a strange view of how the galaxy perceived them. They weren’t Cartelites with their cults of personality. Individual Armenites rarely stood out in the galactic media. Rather than mentioning this, she kept the conversation firmly on the point that most interested her. “That still doesn’t explain why I couldn’t meet him.”
Farl still appeared unable to comprehend what was troubling her. “Am I incorrect in my understanding? Do not the Cartelite families also arrange their children’s marriages? You told me they don’t even give their children a legal choice as to whether or not to wed. Delling determined that helping young Kole to remain focused on his studies was more important than a passing meeting with his betrothed. What would such a meeting have accomplished? Duty required you both to wed. Duty required you both to accept and embrace the judgment of your elders in the choice of your spouse. What benefit was to be derived from a personal meeting before the time of the wedding ceremony?”
Jewel wanted to pull her hair out in frustration. Yes, Cartelite parents had a legal right to decide who their children would marry, but they also—in all but bizarrely extreme cases such as her own—understood that there had to be at least a level of marginal compatibility between the new bride and groom if the marriage was to be successful. The Armenites didn’t appear to agree with this assessment.
“I thought you said that Armenite marriages were voluntary—that the unions weren’t valid if the man and woman didn’t both freely consent to be husband and wife.”
“That’s true,” the justiciar general said, “but no properly raised Armenites would fail to understand their duty and refuse the arrangements their elders had put in place for them.”
“So they don’t have a choice?” Jewel asked.
“Of course they do,” the justiciar general insisted.
Jewel didn’t believe him. That wasn’t to say that she thought he was lying, but they just weren’t understanding each other on a basic level. “What would happen to Kole if he refused to marry me when his elders told him to?”
Farl suddenly sat back in his chair, pulling away from Jewel in response to her question. “Lieutenant Delling’s case is very complicated. There are unique circumstances that make him a bad example to explore what we’re talking about.”
And yet, Jewel thought, Kole is the only example that really matters. Still, she would work with what she had. “Then take a typical Armenite man. He’s told to marry a woman and he says no. What happens to him?”
“He would be expelled from his House and ostracized from society.”
That was the same penalty for adultery, Jewel noticed. “What does that mean precisely—expel him? Ostracize him?”
“It means,” Farl explained, “that he would be severed from the fundamental relationship in our society and if he persisted in his dishonor he would be cast out and given the status of helot.”
Jewel knew that helot was the term the Armenites used for the subject peoples who had refused to swear oaths of loyalty to the Hegemony after their planets had been conquered. It did not sound like an attractive alternative.
“What if the man changed his mind after being expelled and chose the path of honor?” Jewel asked. “What would that entail?”
“The only honorable course would be self termination.”
Jewel felt her eyes bulging in her sockets. “What did you say?”
“Suicide is the ultimate act of redemption,” the justiciar general repeated. From his manner he was evidently having as much difficulty accepting Jewel’s incredulity as she was in believing any people could truly want their sons and daughters to kill themselves to avoid a scandal.
“That’s barbaric,” Jewel protested.
“Quite the contrary,” Farl insisted. “It is the ultimate recognition of duty and of the importance of House and nation over self.”
Jewel wanted to pull her hair and scream. There was no talking to this man. He just kept sprouting the same nonsense over and over again. “And what if I decide I don’t want to marry Kole? What then? Do you expect me to kill myself?”
The justiciar general shook his head. “No, if you Cartelites have a conception of honor it is far too primitive to expect you to live up to civilized standards.”
Jewel shot to her feet but Farl kept on talking.
“You would be sentenced for your act of piracy, your family and its proxy, the Khaba Cartel, would be severed from all contact with the Hegemony.”
Jewel sat down again. “And that’s precisely what you did when you found me on that old colonizer, isn’t it?”
Farl disagreed. “That’s not technically correct. What actually happened is that approximately one standard year b
efore we discovered you on the Genesis, House Delling reached out to your parents and informed them that after several approved delays, Lieutenant Kole Delling was ready to solemnize his marriage with you. Your parents, however, could not produce you for the wedding. Instead, they attempted to substitute their artificially produced daughter for you—without adequately explaining your absence. Delling responded by cutting off all armenium deliveries to Khaba refineries.”
“But I ran away,” Jewel reminded him. “Why aren’t all of you angry or disappointed in me? Why are you still willing to let me marry Kole instead of telling me to go kill myself?”
"That might have been our response, had there not been so many special circumstances,” Farl admitted. He began to tick those circumstances off on his tattooed fingers. “First, your bioware claimed that you had been kidnapped. Obviously if this had actually been the case you could not be held responsible for your disappearance.”
He ticked off another finger before Jewel could interrupt him. “By the time it became apparent that you were not the victim of a crime, we had found you in your sleep capsule and analyzed the nature of the injuries you received in the Valkyrie System.”
“What did that have to do with it?” Jewel asked, but the justiciar general ignored her question and continued his story.
“Some factions in Delling, led by the current head of House, took your condition as a sign of providence and asked permission of the Council of Elders to move forward with the marriage if you survived your injuries.”
“I don’t understand,” Jewel said.
“You don’t have to,” the Empyreal told her. “What’s important is that both your family and the House of Delling would like this marriage to happen.”
“But…” Jewel tried to wrap her head around what the Empyreal was telling her. What was it about finding her in cold sleep that made her return so provident? And hadn’t Physician General Adel also made it sound like Jewel’s appearance was an act of God, or the Unity, as they termed it? “Look, I understand why my return is important. There are trillions in revenues at stake. For Delling to have to break off its relationship with Khaba and start from scratch with someone else would cause nearly as great financial distress in the Hegemony as it would in the rest of the galaxy. But what I don’t understand is this added layer of…I don’t know what term to use. You’re making it sound almost like a religious revelation that I’ve shown up at this time and that I was in cold sleep when I did it. Could you help me understand this, please?”
“Hmmmm,” Farl mused.
“Does that mean you’re not going to tell me?”
The Empyreal shook his head. “No, it means I’m trying to determine the best way to share this information with you.”
What was it with these people? Why were they making it so difficult? “Might I suggest,” Jewel said, “that you try a straightforward and direct answer. That would seem to be in keeping with the Armenite character and it would certainly satisfy my curiosity.”
Farl continued to disagree with her. “In this case, I doubt that it would. Some lessons need to be experienced to be properly learned. And some experiences defy cumbersome verbal descriptions. So let me try and put you on the proper path to knowledge.”
He leaned forward ever so slightly as if what he was about to tell Jewel excited him. “Lieutenant Delling is undergoing a difficult time. For the first time in his thirty-four years, he has experienced failure. Through no fault of his own, the path that all expected him to walk is now denied. Your return at this moment reopens an earlier honorable path that we had also thought closed to him by your disappearance. That you come as you have, Physician General Adel and I believe to be Providence.”
As Farl spoke, Jewel felt her heart curl up inside her in sympathy. Poor Kole, all his schooling, all his promise, all his pride…and in the end he hadn’t been good enough. Someone must have beaten him out for the career he’d been striving for—whatever that might be. His failure made him seem more human to her—more real to her—than he ever had before.
Then she remembered Rear Admiral Delling’s clear opposition to the marriage. “But not all of you see my return as a good thing, do you?”
Farl leaned even closer to her as if unconsciously trying to demonstrate his earnestness. “The difficulty with determining Providence is that the actions of the Unity are open to interpretation. My old colleague, Hoyt, does not agree that this marriage is a suitable alternate path of service for his nephew.”
“He doesn’t like me, you mean,” Jewel said.
The justiciar general abruptly sat back again in his chair. While his posture could not be termed relaxed, neither was it rigid. “I believe it is safe to say that he dislikes all Cartelites and foreigners, but that is irrelevant now. The decision to move forward with the marriage has been made. Your betrothed is on his way here as we speak. And now it is up to you to decide whether or not you are willing to complete the agreement made between Amon Sapphira and Dag Delling thirty years ago.”
That was the question, wasn’t it? And now there was even more pressure on her to say yes. Aside from the fate of herself, and her friends, and Khaba, and the whole damned galactic economy, refusing this marriage would evidently rip away the only honorable path open to Kole as well. She’d never really thought about this from his perspective before. She didn’t like humanizing her fiancé in her thoughts.
Farl was waiting for her decision and Jewel decided to be honest but diplomatic with him. “I’m nervous about this decision. Since you witnessed my meeting with my parents, you know that I am not on the best of terms with them. So I can’t trust that they are acting in anyone’s best interests but their own. Even so, I am mostly inclined toward going ahead with the marriage.” Erik’s image flashed before her eyes but Jewel successfully suppressed the urge to cringe. She wasn’t really betraying Erik. They had no chance of being together. What she was doing was using her impending nuptials to try and save him and the others.
“It is what I expected to do my entire life,” she continued. If the Empyreal noticed her brief hesitation he gave no sign of it. “If Delling had not sought to delay the wedding, I don’t think I would have ever questioned the need to do so.”
“Well said,” Farl complemented her. “Why do I sense that you are about to say, But?”
Jewel smiled at him. At unexpected moments like this she could actually see herself liking this old man. “That’s because you are very perceptive.”
Farl did not respond to the complement. “So what continues to trouble you?”
Jewel took a deep breath and told him. “Two centuries ago, two other Cartelite women married into Armenite society and I haven’t been able to learn anything about what happened to them. Two of their children served in your diplomatic core, as do three of their grandchildren, but on the rare occasions when I was permitted to speak to those grandchildren they were less than forthcoming about what happened to their Cartelite ancestors—almost as if they were embarrassed by them.”
The Empyreal sighed. “You Cartelites never cease to amaze me. Amisi Lisht and Ebe Nuri married into the Houses of Vili and Austri respectively. I’m sorry to have to tell you that they were not good matches. Our two cultures are not well suited to each other. The women threw tantrums to obtain luxuries the possession of which would have brought shame upon their husbands. After the first child was born, Amisi’s family, the Lisht Cartel, negotiated a series of extended holidays for their daughter so that the young woman need only spend one twelfth of a standard year with her husband and his House. The only condition placed on this by Vili was that the separations be kept discrete to avoid scandal. Evidently the Lisht Cartel is still adhering to that bargain even in situations to which it clearly should not apply.”
In the past few minutes, Jewel had gained more practical insight into the life that was expected of her than she had in all the years of the rest of her life combined. “No, they aren’t,” she told Farl.
He waited for her to
say more.
“The Lisht aren’t protecting you from scandal,” she explained. “This is a trade secret for them. They were very unhappy when Delling made its agreement with my parents and opened up armenium trading through Khaba. Lisht kept quiet to keep me ignorant and frightened—hoping to damage my prospective union with Kole.”
Farl slowly nodded as he carefully considered what Jewel had told him. “Interesting, despite centuries of interaction with you we continue to misunderstand your people’s basic motivations. You’re so unlike us. The inability of the Cartels of your nation to act in dependable mutual support never ceases to surprise and amaze me.”
The more Jewel learned about them, the more different—the more alien—the Armenites appeared to her as well. “You really mean that, don’t you? When I learned that you and Empyreal Adel were members of the Vili and Austri Houses, I expected you to work in collusion to break the betrothal agreement so that Delling would suffer a financial setback which your Houses could take advantage of. But I had it completely backward. You were the two who favored the marriage over the rear admiral’s objections. You really are trying to act in the manner you perceive best for the entire Hegemony, aren’t you?”
“Of course, I am,” Farl assured her. “But understand this too, so is Rear Admiral Delling. The physician general and I disagree with him over the proper course, but only time and the actions of you and Lieutenant Delling will tell us which position was the correct one.”
There hadn’t been many times in her life in which Jewel had found something to unreservedly admire about Armenite society, but this patriotic selflessness was worthy of respect. She actually wished that her own people could be a little more like the Armenites in this one regard.
“So what happened to the other woman, Ebe Nuri?” Jewel asked.
“She committed suicide after the birth of her second child,” the Empyreal told her.
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