Master of Formalities

by Scott Meyer

  “I am, Milady. It is a well-established technique that is almost certain to succeed.” Migg paused, then said, “Phee?”

  Phee had been rifling through her papers, and was ready with the pertinent precedents. “It is true, Milady. There are examples of great houses cementing alliances through marriage that reach back to well before the Terran Exodus.”

  “Of course I know that,” Lady Jakabitus spat, “but he’s far too young! He’s only fourteen!”

  Migg nodded, as if in agreement, but she said, “He will be fifteen soon, and there is precedent.” Again, there was a moment of awkward silence before Migg said, “Phee?”

  Phee continued to scan her papers as she spoke, “There is precedent. It is not uncommon on many federated worlds for marriages to be arranged and formalized, either by the betrothed or their families, years before the betrothed reach adulthood.”

  Her Ladyship shook her head emphatically. “I can’t send my dear Rayzo away to the Hahn!”

  Migg turned to look at Phee.

  “Milady,” Phee said, “according to precedent, sometimes the couple is legally married in every way except that the respective spouses each reside on separate worlds until both parties have reached adulthood, or sometimes long after.”

  Lady Jakabitus glared at Migg. “You ask a great deal.”

  “I ask nothing but that you listen. This is an opportunity to end the war that has caused so much waste and suffering, with a relatively minor sacrifice on your family’s part.”

  “You call Rayzo a minimal sacrifice?” Lady Jakabitus shouted.

  “You wouldn’t be sacrificing Master Rayzo. He wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t even leave home for several years. Indeed, it’s entirely practical to think that he and his spouse would live here or—at worst—split their time between this world and the Hahn Home World, depending on his spouse’s responsibilities.”

  “But he’d be married to a Hahn!”

  “Milady, I lived many years on the Hahn Home World, and I can assure you that not all Hahn are like Master Hennik or Lord Kamar Hahn. It’s entirely possible that Master Rayzo would have a rewarding relationship with his betrothed, and even if not, they would hardly be the only people in the universe engaged in a marriage of convenience. While it is not ideal, there are ways to make that existence more palatable. There were rumors that your own father had . . .”

  Migg trailed off, because Lady Jakabitus’s expression made it very clear that she should.

  “Would Kamar Hahn consent to this arrangement?” Lady Jakabitus asked.

  “He already has, Milady. This is the endgame of the gambit that began with Hennik and me being captured.”

  “Is that how it began?” Lady Jakabitus asked. “Or did it start with the Hahn offensive?”

  Migg looked at the floor. “Regrettably, you are correct, Milady. He came up with that wrinkle on his own, and would not be dissuaded. Still, you have the opportunity to ensure that all of the suffering he has caused your people isn’t in vain.”

  Lady Jakabitus took a long, slow breath while staring at Migg. “So Kamar Hahn believes he’s manipulating me.”

  “Yes, Milady.”

  “Then why would I let him?”

  “Because, Milady, it is in fact you who will be manipulating him.”

  “I suspect it’s you who are manipulating both of us,” Lady Jakabitus said.

  “You are correct, Your Ladyship. All three of those statements are true. The beauty of this course of action is that all parties will walk away victorious.”

  Lady Jakabitus sat and thought. Migg smiled at Phee, who took her time not smiling back.

  “Who would Rayzo marry?” Lady Jakabitus asked. “I’m certain you have some idea.”

  Migg breathed deeply, then said, “The most appropriate candidate would be Lord Hahn’s daughter, Master Hennik’s older sister, Miss Shimlish Hahn.”

  “Is she not commonly referred to as Shimlish the Pig?”

  “She is, Milady, but I have known Miss Shimlish for many years, and I can assure you that the honorific the Pig is not a reflection on her appearance, only her behavior, and even then it is greatly exaggerated.”

  “Exaggerated? I was told it was meant as a compliment,” Lady Jakabitus said.

  “Yes, Your Ladyship, but it’s a compliment to the Hahn. In your culture, it would still work out to being an insult, I’m afraid.”

  “And you want to marry poor sweet Rayzo into that?”

  “Only after properly preparing him, Milady. I had expected to spend years using Hennik as a training tool to get Master Rayzo ready, but as he has amply proved today, Master Rayzo is much stronger than I had dared hope. I fear we must move quickly before word filters back to the Hahn Home World that Master Rayzo is not the weakling Lord Hahn assumes he is.”

  “I’m going to need to think about this,” Lady Jakabitus said bitterly.

  “Of course, Milady, but as I said, time is of the essence. With your permission, I will start the preliminary planning. I will not do anything official, nor will I involve anyone besides Phee.”

  Migg glanced at Phee, and was displeased to see her furiously scribbling on her papers, oblivious to the conversation. There was no need for precedents at the moment, so Migg couldn’t imagine what she was noting or requesting.

  “Phee,” she said sharply, “are you paying attention?”

  Phee lowered her paper and stood at attention. “Yes, Migg,” she said. “I am.”

  60.

  “So I believe it’s clear,” Wollard shouted up to the impassive silhouettes of the scrutinizers, “that I am but a victim, an unwitting pawn in a sinister game I didn’t even know I was playing.”

  The scrutinizers looked down at him; Woolard stood as defiantly as he could manage while at the bottom of a stone pit, wearing a sack. After a moment, one of the scrutinizers (Wollard still could not distinguish them) asked, “Are you done?”

  “Maybe,” Wollard said.

  “Almost definitely,” the scrutinizer said. “If we understand your position, Wollard, it is that you admit to committing the error of which you stand accused, yet you feel you should not have been removed from your former position because your successor outwitted you.”

  “I don’t think I said that,” Wollard sniffed.

  “You did.”

  “Even if that is the way you choose to see it, I was not the only one to have been manipulated. She outwitted everyone.”

  “Perhaps,” the faceless scrutinizer said, “but we aren’t scrutinizing everyone, Wollard. Just you. Do you have anything further to say in your own defense?”

  “Yes,” Wollard blurted. He didn’t know what else he could say, but he was certain that what he had said thus far had not worked, so he saw little harm in trying to come up with something else. He had counted on having some time to go through his journal and organize some notes. Without that time, he’d been forced to make his defense on the fly, skimming his notes and mentioning important points as he came to them. Now he ruffled and jabbed at his papers, scanning his journal in reverse order in a frantic search for anything he might have missed.

  “What is it, Wollard?” the scrutinizer said. “What more would you like to say?”

  “Um, I’m looking for it now. I’ll have it in a second. Please bear with me,” Wollard said without looking up from his papers.

  “I’ll tell you what, Wollard. I have a few things I’d like to say. I doubt you’ll enjoy hearing them, so feel free to continue looking for this miraculous defense, which you neglected to mention at any earlier point. I will say my piece. If, by the time I’m done chastising you, you have not remembered whatever it is you would like to say, we will pass judgment. Agreed?”

  “I have little choice,” Wollard said.

  “You have no choice,” the scrutinizer corrected him.

  Wollard
signaled his agreement by returning to his search.

  “Wollard,” the anonymous scrutinizer said, “nobody denies that the Master of Formalities known as Migg has acted in a suspicious manner, manipulating the Formalities to suit her own ends and possibly the ends of her former ruler, Lord Kamar Hahn. That is the case you have made, and we find it convincing. That said, you yourself have pointed out that she’s worked within the rules of proper form, which is the reason you are being scrutinized and not her.”

  Wollard shrugged his shoulders to signal that at least one hemisphere of his brain was listening while the other was still trying to save his skin.

  The scrutinizer continued. “You should be grateful to Migg, Wollard. Because of her actions, the great unspoken truth of the universe is about to be revealed to you—a truth that she seems to grasp without guidance, but which you must be told. It’s a shame you aren’t paying closer attention. Wollard, the truth is that while the rulers of each individual planet make the decisions on which history is built, they almost always make the decisions we suggest. Knowing that, I must ask you who truly rules the galaxy, and since you’re otherwise occupied, I’ll answer for you. We do. We, the Arbiters, rule the galaxy.”

  This broke Wollard’s concentration. “What?” he asked. “But we merely advise. The role of the Arbiters, and the Masters of Formalities, is to smooth and lubricate the course of history, not to steer it.”

  “Yes, but you can do a great deal of steering by lubricating some places more than others, creating a path of least resistance, and I advise you to keep looking at your notes. You don’t have much time left. Wollard, the great houses abide by the Formalities because to do otherwise would be ruinous. To advise is to tell someone what they should do. To command is to tell them what they must do. We advise the great houses, but they follow our advice because they must. They accept our control because they don’t perceive it as control. That is why we can’t ever tell them that they can’t do anything, even when they can’t. You know this. You’ve given some version of this speech yourself, I’d wager.”

  “It didn’t sound so malevolent then,” Wollard said.

  “Because you didn’t perceive it as such, which only strengthens my point. Wollard, this can’t really be a surprise. Why on earth did you think it took so long for the Arbiters to ever make a formal recommendation? If it were simply a matter of looking up information and sending it along, the process would be nearly instantaneous. We gather, catalog, analyze, and parse all of the information in the galaxy, then we debate everything and then prune the information like a tree until it conforms to the shape we want. I’ll give you an example. We wanted Lady Jakabitus to adopt the captured Hahn boy because all of the precedents suggested that this would lead to increased tensions on Ophion 6. So, we edited the precedents to downplay the increased tension and emphasize the possible long-term gain.”

  “But why would you want to increase the tensions on Ophion 6?” Wollard asked, looking up from his papers.

  “For the same reason we engineered the conflict so long ago, have maintained it ever since, and will see to it that it continues until everyone in this room is long dead. Because Apios and the Hahn Home World have the two most fully developed armies in their respective regions of the galaxy, and as long as we can keep them aimed at each other, they will remain safely stalemated until we need to direct them elsewhere.”

  Wollard sagged. He looked back down to his papers, but something told him that he was fighting to retain a position he no longer even wanted. He muttered, “I’ve been a fool.”

  “Yes, Wollard,” the scrutinizer said, trying and not quite succeeding to sound sympathetic. “You’re here today because of several failures of perception. You failed to perceive the Formalities’ true purpose, you failed to perceive Migg’s true intent, and you failed to understand the true purpose of your scrutiny. You’ve spent your time trying to convince us that you behaved properly in the past. We see everything. It often takes us some time to see it, and more time to act, but we always do. We already know how you comported yourself in the past. What we don’t know, what you should have been telling us, is how useful you can be to us in the future. With that in mind, do you have anything to add?”

  Wollard looked up, confused. “Have you already passed judgment?”

  “No,” the scrutinizer said. “I was just about to. You really should be listening, Wollard, I’m laying it all out here.”

  “It’s just, my CV has been edited. You didn’t do it?”

  “No. We do things properly here at the Central Authority. I promise you, your CV will not be edited until you have been officially found guilty, and then it will be erased, and you will be given a job well below your former position, not that anybody will have any way of knowing that. Wollard! Are you listening to me?”

  “Only as much as I have to. If, as you say, the maintenance of tension on Ophion 6 is important to you, then my former protégée has just sent extremely fresh information that will be of great interest to you. It may well demonstrate a way in which I can be of use, which, if I heard you correctly, should make you quite happy.”

  “Ecstatic,” the scrutinizer said bitterly.

  PART 8

  A wedding between two people who love each other is a joyous occasion, and is to be celebrated.

  A wedding designed to form a marriage of convenience is a convenient occasion, and is to be celebrated only so much as is convenient.

  -Excerpt from The Arbiters’ Official Guidelines Regarding the Careful Control and Judicious Deployment of Enthusiasm

  61.

  “Know that two thousand, one hundred, and seventy-one conventional years have passed since the Terran Exodus,” Migg said, projecting so as to be heard throughout the servants’ hall. “Today is the twenty-second day of the fourth month. We meet on the planet Apios, in the servants’ hall of Palace Koa, the ancestral home of House Jakabitus and its matriarch, Lady Joanadie Jakabitus. I am Migg, Master of Formalities for House Jakabitus, and I am currently delivering the daily meeting to the palace staff.”

  The servants’ hall was filled with people, the vast majority of whom seemed excited. The visible minority was made up entirely of the customary palace staff, who looked numb. Migg understood this. They had grown quite comfortable in the routine of their jobs, but in the five days since Migg had taken over as Master of Formalities they’d been fed a steady diet of surprising events.

  “I want to start by welcoming all members of the auxiliary staff. As you well know, we have brought you in from every corner of the planet, on very short notice, to assist us at this exciting and stressful time. We of the permanent staff welcome you here, and believe me, we appreciate your help.”

  A polite laugh rippled through the crowd, diverting around the stone-faced group of permanent staff like waves flowing around a rock.

  “It may interest you to know,” Migg said, “that most of us were just as surprised as you all were when Lady Jakabitus announced the forthcoming wedding of Master Rayzo.”

  She chose not to mention who Master Rayzo was marrying. It was not a secret, but that didn’t mean she needed to remind everyone.

  Migg continued, “And I can assure you that the staff was probably more surprised than you are to hear that the actual nuptials would occur here, at the palace, tomorrow.”

  Phee looked down at her friends. Not one of them looked happy, and why should they? There was too little time and too much pressure for them to pull off an extremely high-profile event the following day, no matter how many auxiliary staff members had joined the team. Besides, everyone who knew the parties in question was certain it was a mistake.

  Migg seemed confident, but then again, she always did. She claimed to believe the staff was up to the challenge, but Phee couldn’t help but remember that Migg had gotten her current position by putting Wollard under great pressure then watching him fail. Phee looked out at the
sea of eager faces in the crowd and wondered if Migg intended to recruit a new palace staff that would not remember who she was or how she came to inherit her position.

  Migg said, “A wedding is always a happy occasion—a wedding joining two great houses, even more so. But this occasion trumps even that, because I am authorized to announce to you that as of last night, Lady Joanadie Jakabitus and Lord Kamar Hahn have agreed to a provisional cease-fire, halting all aggression between their houses on the planet Ophion 6.”

  The crowd roared its approval. This news was the logical next step after the announcement of the wedding, and most people had expected it, but the wedding had only just been announced, so they hadn’t been expecting it so soon. Even the permanent staff was happy.

  They’re eager to trade the future of a promising young man for the lives of hundreds of strangers, Phee thought. What does that say about them? Then again, what does the fact that I’m not willing to make that sacrifice say about me? Is it possible to be selfish on someone else’s behalf?

  As Migg laid out the schedule for the coming day, Phee tried to distract herself by checking her papers, but no good news awaited her there. She hadn’t heard back from Wollard. She didn’t even know if he had seen the message.

  Phee was so lost in thought she didn’t even hear it when Migg dismissed the staff. Only the sight of them all standing up snapped her out of her daze.

  She followed as Migg quickly made her way out of the servants’ hall. Migg moved quickly every day, but usually not to this extent.

  As they left the room, Phee took note of Umily talking to Gint, who was standing next to her in his new guard uniform. The captain of the guards had apparently viewed Gint’s attack on Kreet as an audition rather than an assault.

  By the same token, Lady Jakabitus had taken Kreet’s sabotage of the drink-dispensing bulkfab as a resignation rather than an act of treason. He would recover in an infirmary somewhere in the Palace’s new addition until he was well enough to be sent back into the general workforce. None of his injuries were serious, but they were painful enough that Lady Jakabitus felt that they, combined with the sting of being fired from his position at the palace, were punishment enough.