Ninth Euclid's Prince

by Daniel M. Hoyt

Lord Oswald activated the room link. “Connect me with Euclid again. Our link dropped.”

  The starship computer hesitated only a moment. “Ninth Euclid is not in his assigned room. Sorry.”

  “That's odd,” my Lord said, sounding puzzled indeed. “He just called me, but now he's not there.”

  Lady Euclid said, “Now wait a minute, Adrian,” in a challenging tone that snapped me out of my gloom.

  “I'm sorry,” Lord Oswald said, his voice retreating to the outer room. “But I need to find Euclid. Something may have happened to him. I’ll see myself out.”

  Lady Redwing's outer cabin door slammed shut.

  My Lord had abandoned me? In Lady Redwing’s closet? With her half-dressed?

  Panicked, I quietly sat up in the closet and cautiously peeked through the slit. Lady Redwing was standing at her bathroom door, glowering.

  “He did it again,” she burst out loud. She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Fine. You don't want me at court; I won't go to court.” She glared at the bedroom door. “And neither will my retinue, Adrian. Let's see what the emperor thinks of that.”

  With that, Lady Phoenix stuck her tongue out in what had been Lord Oswald's direction, just before her face crumpled and she rushed into her bathroom, crying, slamming the door behind her.

  With all the noise she made, I was able to slip out undetected to the passageway, where I found my Lord waiting with a plastic grin. “Well done, my boy, well done. I knew you’d make it out unscathed.”

  My heart broke for the lady, but I truly believed my Lord saw no way to rescue me without hurting her feelings. I’m not sure I would have done any better in such a desperate situation. As we turned away from the lady’s door, I swear I saw a twinge of regret flash across my Lord’s unconvincing smile and heard him mumble something about deserving better.

  I realized with a start that, incredibly, I had managed to accomplish my original mission in the process. Lady Redwing had agreed to stay out of court. But for some reason I couldn't quite fathom, I had a strong suspicion that it was a decision that would come back to haunt my Lord.

  Chapter 6

  Arrival in New Rome

  LADY REDWING CHOSE TO HAVE DINNER SERVED IN HER CABIN THAT NIGHT, a slight which did not go unnoticed by my Lord. Even if he hadn’t figured out he was in trouble, her staff went out of their way to inform him. Graphically.

  It started with Lord Oswald’s soup. Midway through the course, he found a wrenchbeetle’s characteristic pincers in his bowl. The chef, of course, apologized profusely and offered a replacement, but the prince was no fool. When killed, wrenchbeetles oozed their bodily fluids, a substance with the aromatic assault equivalent of about a ton of rotting fish, mixed with sewage. If one of the nose-numbing bugs had expired in the galley, the chef certainly knew about it.

  Next up on the menu was a prime cut of prairie loper, with a bloodberry compote. The prince’s serving was long and thin, and included part of a hoof. Again, the chef apologized sincerely for the oversight and offered to cut off the offending portion. Instead, Lord Oswald commandeered my half-eaten plate, which had included the best specimen I’d ever tasted, and demanded a replacement for me.

  Even the wine, an exceptionally fine vintage from the west coast of Oasis, soured in my Lord’s glass. He complained of a soapy taste, as if the goblet hadn’t been rinsed fully.

  When I was about sixteen, I tried to orchestrate a nice candlelit dinner for my first girlfriend. I made the other Euclids agree to go elsewhere, probably a tavern or house of pleasure or somewhere, just not in the house, where they’d probably feel forced to play some kind of childish prank that would ultimately cost me the girl’s respect. That left only my parents and Hannah, who grudgingly agreed to stay out of my way for the evening. With the foolish overextension of talents typical of my age, I attempted to prepare, all by myself, an impressive feast that included lots of sauces and strange garnishes. It turned out also to include lots more patience than I had at the time. Somewhere between the singed rockfowl — I didn’t know it needed to be plucked; I thought the feathers would burn off — and the Telsor Tar sauce for the vegetables hardening so much that real tar would have been preferable, mama took pity on me and offered to take over.

  Due to my date’s impending arrival, Mama ordered Hannah to help her with the preparations. Hannah had made other plans — which probably included the equivalent for her of what the Euclids were doing — and was none too pleased, a fact she made known to me through non-verbal jabs.

  I seated my date, a very pretty brown-haired girl named Irisan, at the family table with two place settings at one end, across from each other so that we could gaze longingly into each other’s eyes over the flickering candlelight. Leaving Irisan at the table, I dashed into the kitchen to bring out two plates of a special salad I’d made — the only thing remaining from my abysmally failed attempt at being a chef.

  Her plate sported a new addition, a tiny spider, still clutching part of its cobweb, which I didn’t notice before she did — after a forkful of the salad. Irisan screamed for about five minutes. It turned out she was terrified of spiders.

  When I returned to the kitchen for the rockfowl — replacements that Mama’d prepared excellently — I found Hannah giggling. She offered to take the rockfowl out personally, but I refused, suspicious of her possible involvement with the spider in the salad. Just before leaving the kitchen, an idea struck me and I asked her which rockfowl looked the best, explaining that I intended to offer Irisan the choicest bird.

  I kept the one Hannah indicating, reasoning that if there was any tampering, I’d get the altered meal myself, rather than serving the substandard one to my date.

  Despite its excellent external appearance, Irisan found her stuffing included a beak. For all I know, Hannah had doctored my meal similarly, but I never got the chance to find out. Irisan, poor girl, ran out the door, vowing never to speak to me again, which she upheld the rest of the time I lived on the farm.

  Hannah smirked at me, then politely asked Mama if it was okay for her to go.

  Lady Redwing’s chef smirked the same way Hannah had, and politely asked if the prince wanted dessert.

  Lord Oswald declined, and retired for the night hungry, I’m sure.

  In the morning, I woke at dawn after a troubled night of dreams that included the Lady Redwing covered in silver and blue feathers, baked in a huge oven, and covered in a sauce made from Lord Oswald’s blood, dripping from a finger wound my sister Hannah inflicted with a large kitchen knife.

  We had already landed at the Eternal Jumpport, the emperor’s private port, sometime during the night, and Lord Oswald had not been informed on arrival, as he had expressly requested.

  The Phoenix was empty, save me, my Lord and his two Angels. Lady Redwing’s entire retinue, including the pilot, had vanished without a trace. The lady’s cabin had been meticulously cleaned, the bed dressed, even her clothes removed — including the matching suits she’d had made for my Lord and me. It was as if she’d never been on the ship at all, a hallucination my Lord certainly would have accepted cheerfully were it not for the disappearance of her staff as well.

  I bade the Angels instaclean their best attire and get ready for our official arrival in New Rome in half an hour.

  Instacleaning my Lord’s and my clothes personally, I interrupted his gentle snoring and informed him of the situation.

  To his credit, Lord Oswald didn’t appear surprised. “I guess we’ll have a minimal retinue then,” he said simply, and got up to dress.

  I excused myself to dress and fetch the Angels, two broad-shouldered warriors nearly as tall as myself, and built at least as firmly. We were an impressive and fearsome accompaniment to my Lord. To be honest, when the prince joined us, the four of us looked more like an armed advance guard arriving to discuss terms of surrender with the emperor, rather than one of the emperor’s loyal subjects and heir with his retinue, responding to a summons.

  Although it was ea
rly yet for courtiers, the emperor’s court was out in full force, milling about the palace haphazardly. I saw no sign of any other heirs, though, not even Prince Vere. We checked in with the palace administrator and marched in formation through the crowd to the great hall, where the emperor usually received guests, seated upon an impressive gilded throne three times the height of a man.

  The hall was empty.

  Behind us in the hallway, something rapped against the floor twice, catching our attention. “Breakfast, Adrian,” the emperor said in shaky voice, not totally unexpected as he was nearing ninety.

  I whirled around reflexively at his voice, as did the prince and his Angels, only to see the emperor’s stooped-over back retreating from us within a knot of armed personal guards, his walking stick banging on the floor with each step.

  Empress Jewel paused, glanced back at us and winked, which caused my Lord to color slightly.

  We followed close behind them into a large dining hall with tapestries hanging on the walls behind each overly-decorated and gilded chair, any one of which would have been appropriate as a throne on another planet.

  Expecting to find Prince Vere already seated, I was surprised to find a couple dozen other heirs there as well. Every now and then, there was an empty seat or two, but mostly the table was filled.

  The emperor shuffled to one end of the immensely long table, where there were two chairs, one for him and one for his Jewel. The other end was bare, so as not to diminish His Grace’s importance. Prince Vere, along with his wife, sat directly to the emperor’s right. Lady Willow Vere was pale and slightly built, with chocolate-brown eyes and medium length platinum blonde hair tied up behind her head. She was breathtaking, a fine complement to the handsome prince, but she showed little love for her husband. She seemed to ignore her husband, looking away in a different direction whenever he spoke.

  Maybe it was my vanity, but I thought I saw her gaze follow me as we came into the room, with what appeared to be intense longing. My breath caught, and I nearly tripped as our eyes met for a moment. I convinced myself it was my Lord she watched, and wondered if Prince Vere suspected his wife held impure thoughts about another prince.

  The other heirs were scattered about the table in a pattern that wasn’t obvious to me, but there were two empty seats to the left of the empress.

  We were conducted to those empty seats and Prince Oswald took the seat nearest the royal couple. The Angels took up standard guard positions standing behind us, as had several other guards behind their masters. I hesitated for a moment, standing between them and my Lord.

  Realizing that the room was reserved for heirs and a single guest each, presumably a spouse or someone close to the heir, I reasoned that the uncharacteristically early crowds we had seen in the palace were the other heirs’ retinues.

  Outside, those retinues were trading useful information, such as who was currently favored with the emperor and who wasn’t, which heirs were new, and, of course, which heirs hadn’t arrived due to unexpected deaths. The gossip among the retinues in the halls was what really kept the empire running; not the Imperial Senate or even the emperor. That was how one got the nitty-gritty information needed to combat the myriad petty attempts at undermining an heir’s status.

  And here was my Lord with no retinue, kept in the dark at the emperor’s palace, a target for assassination, starving for information when he needed it the most. Outside, that was the place I should be, where I longed to be, where I’d be the most useful to my Lord.

  Inside the dining hall, the heirs whispered among themselves, so that there was a gentle murmuring sound, like waves crashing on the shore at night.

  There were some strong looks of disapproval and an accusing murmur or two from heirs I didn’t know as Lord Oswald motioned for me to take the seat next to him. I guessed they had expected a huge inkblot with bright blue hair to be one of the prince’s security guard, rather than a trusted companion. I suppressed the desire for a forlorn glance at the door, ignored the gossips and took my seat graciously.

  The emperor watched us all for a while in silence, his inscrutable black eyes scanning the room, betraying a wisdom that seemed at odds with his appearance. Long scraggly white hair with large gray streaks in it fell from his head randomly, as though he’d never combed it in his life. His dark skin was wrinkled in spots, like an ill-covered couch whose fabric hadn’t been adjusted in years. White splotches dotted his face and arms, and he looked frail.

  I’d heard once that he’d been trained as an accountant, that he wasn’t any smarter than his rivals. Yet this accountant became the emperor of eighty three worlds, with a comely young Jewel by his side.

  From what I’d heard, Jewel was his third wife, having buried the first prematurely after only half a century of marital bliss and divorced the second after she tried to run away with his only son — and primary heir, of course — along with a large portion of the Empire’s cash.

  Emperor Seraphim forgave his son, and even arranged to have him married to a nice girl, the granddaughter of one of his old cronies. Unfortunately, shortly before the wedding, his son perished in a rare jumper accident, leaving his fiancée’s family distraught over their lost opportunity for enhanced status.

  To be fair, the boy heavily modified the jumper and all the safety measures were removed, which made for a more thrilling ride. The accident, while unfortunate, wasn’t unexpected; daredevils rarely lived to ripe old ages.

  So the emperor faced not only the loss of his only son, but the beginnings of a feud with the family of one of his oldest friends. Seizing upon an ancient Old Earth custom to repair the damage between the two families, the aging emperor married his deceased son’s fiancée, as if men were merely interchangeable sperm donors for their families.

  Of course, with his advanced age, it was widely rumored that old Seraphim was impotent by then, so the poor girl got shorted in the deal. It was no wonder she looked elsewhere for her satisfaction.

  Empress Jewel sat quietly by the emperor’s left side, long silky black hair spilling over her pale skin and framing a gently curved face that hadn’t seen much more than twenty years. In her right ear, she wore a single large sapphire earring. Her dress was cut high, despite a large bust set atop her tiny waist. Generous hips flared to her sides, the total effect being that of a woman in her prime, all curves and soft surfaces. She batted her come-hither dark blue eyes at all the heirs, but paid special attention to Prince Vere, glancing at him demurely every minute or so.

  Prince Vere looked down guiltily every time Jewel met his eyes, which I mentally noted for future reference. Perhaps the rumors of his involvement with the empress were true....

  A few times, I caught Vere staring longingly at Jewel while she wasn’t looking, and I noticed for the first time that his trademark sapphire earring in his right ear appeared to be an exact match for the one the empress wore, also in her right ear.

  Breakfast might not be boring after all.

  The emperor struggled to stand, using his cane as a support in one hand and pushing on the tabletop with the other. After several seconds and some help from his guards, he managed to stand, albeit a bit shakily.

  Empress Jewel ignored him throughout the entire ordeal, twirling her black hair in her fingers absentmindedly, looking around the table casually with an intensely bored expression — except when her glance chanced upon Prince Vere.

  Emperor Seraphim VI rapped twice on the ground for the attention of his heirs, but it was unnecessary, as the entire room had fallen silent during his struggle to stand.

  “Everyone is here now?” he asked.

  Behind me and to my right, a soft voice answered. “Yes.”

  I spun my head around, startled. I thought only guards lined the wall, but this was not the voice of a guard.

  An aging, pale white man stepped from the shadows along the wall. As he came into the light, he seemed to grow taller and whiten even more, the contrast between his pasty skin and the dark shadows intensifyi
ng with every step. As he neared, I saw that he was bald, with straggly remainders of what was once a white head of hair peeking out from behind his ears and little beads of sweat dotted his crown. He was fat, which was understandable for his apparent age, which I judged to be mid-sixties, but not from being out of shape. He had the build of a man whose youthful bulging muscles had grown flaccid, their bulk replaced by fat over the years.

  Standing only steps from me, I saw his pale blue, nearly white eyes and knew that I was staring at an albino.

  Recognition dawned. This was Lord Jagumal Noir, the ranking senator in the Imperial Senate, the head of the financial ruling body of all the Eternal Empire, a man with nearly as much power as the emperor himself.

  I had seen him only once before, from a distance, at imperial functions. I had never paid much attention to him in the past, but with the current rumors about his involvement in the disappearance of the heirs, I expected that to change.

  “Everyone?” the emperor asked him again. “You’re sure?”

  One of the younger heirs, far down the table, started to protest, pointing to the empty seats, but Lord Noir stopped him with an upraised hand, and a hard, malevolent stare.

  “Everyone is here,” Lord Noir said darkly.

  Clearly, there were some heirs that never made it, and Lord Noir made it known that they were no longer to be considered. With the emperor nearing ninety, he was sure to rely more and more on his advisors, rather than his own memory, and it appeared that Lord Noir had been chosen to keep track of the heirs to the Eternal Empire.

  A chill ran down my spine as I realized that we had barely made it to New Rome in time, and Lady Redwing’s foolish stunt that morning might have cost my Lord his favor with the emperor. With a blood tie to the emperor, he was in no danger of losing his succession rights — as most of the heirs were, having been appointed to the honor by the emperor’s whim, rather than having been born to it. Unfortunately, out-of-favor heirs tended to lose their heads, rather than their claims.