The Lens of the World Trilogy

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  But Rezhmia also meant tea shops, The Journal Page, and much gossip. After baths and dinner, we set out to discover the state of affairs.

  The Kenrek was where I had left it: that place which announces itself to be the “world home of argument.” There was no salient dispute as we walked in, merely a rumble of conversation and a smell of melted sugar in the air. Navvie had tea, and I, who would rather drink warm pond water than stewed herbs, took two cinnamon buns. There were a number of Journal sheets on the floor, undamaged save for the occasional footprint.

  Velonya was all the news, but it was not good news, nor easily understandable. “A visiting gentleman from Morquenie reports that at least a regiment of Royal Artillery were surrounding the port and the Provincial Statehouse as of last week.” Did that mean they were expecting attack from the water, or that Morquenie itself had been in open rebellion? No clue.

  “Ekesh tax fund unavailable for Crown, according to Prov. Counc.” I wasn’t sure this was even related to the disturbances, but Navvie thought it meant the lakelands were leaning toward rebellion.

  “Velonyie loyalists stand secure in Norwess Province.” This one confused me. “Didn’t they say back in Bugel that Norwess was the center of the rebellion?” I asked, and I passed the sheet back to my daughter, who read it with knitted brow.

  “You know, Papa, I don’t think they mean…” She stopped and turned toward the door, and then my ears, too, heard the sound of men marching.

  They wore the royal silks of Rezhmia, so much like the dress of the Naiish archers in cut and substance, but with so much more elegant an effect. There were six of them, and in front came an officer, a captain by his shoulders and his faded rose-colored tunic. He stepped to the head of his men, looked around the suddenly silent room, and came directly to our table.

  We were on our feet before he had halved the distance. “Behind the counter is the kitchen and the door stands open,” whispered Navvie. “One leap up and then down and out. You lead, Papa.”

  “No,” I whispered back. “I think it’s all right. He’s bowing.”

  “So what? You are an important man. They bow to noble felons just before they disembowel them, don’t they?”

  By now the captain was beside us, and our attitude was making him nervous. He glanced at our sides, clearly expecting to find weapons there, and his face reflected the color of his clothing very nicely. “We didn’t mean to alarm you, Aminsanaur Nazhuret.”

  “A troop of soldiers marching in order is meant to give alarm,” I answered, feeling peevish. “Otherwise they would walk like normal folk.”

  He cleared his throat. “It is only a sign of honor, Exalted.”

  I stared at him and said nothing at all. It is a trick I learned in Rezhmia.

  He cleared his throat again. “Aminsanaur, I am sent to you with a message.”

  “Give it, then.”

  He glanced left and right, and the full teahouse was busily not looking at us. “Here?”

  I nodded, “Our quarters are inconveniently distant. Speak, please.”

  “Then I am to say that your aunt would like to see you.” He spoke all in a rush and then breathed heavily.

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes, Aminsanaur. If it is convenient.”

  Navvie frowned, then giggled. “Is that the sort of message you thought needed privacy, Captain?”

  He stared through her politely, and then saw what a pretty girl he was ignoring. The captain became human. “Well, I can’t know, can I, Exalted? It’s better to be conservative in such matters.”

  I folded The Journal Page neatly and put it in my shirt to finish later. I counted out a tip for the waiter and put on my jacket. I noticed that neither the captain nor his troop had moved. “Are you determined to accompany us all the way to the Towers, Captain?”

  “It is my honor,” he said firmly.

  “Are you equally determined to march? If you do, you will convince my daughter, the neighborhood, and possibly myself that we are going to our execution.”

  “We certainly don’t have to march,” he said.

  My aunt was the royal mother and regent of the sanaur of Rezhmia, who was then about seven years old. She was not really my aunt, any more than the sanaur of my youth had been my grandfather. The family was so extended that relationship became unwieldy. I had met her three times before in my life, once since her son had been acclaimed the new sanaur. I remembered her as a woman of great common sense.

  We walked through the dark streets, and despite their best intentions, the soldiers had a strong tendency to march. Navvie had an equally strong tendency to disrupt their marching—by hurrying forward and then stopping, to retie her shoelace, by dropping her coin purse on the cobbles and having to quarter the street until it was found, by stopping at shop windows, and once, to my secret satisfaction, by skipping. She talked to them, too: the captain and the men, asking the simplest questions like a tourist, and by the time we reached the sanaur’s household gates, she had converted one troop into seven individual men.

  The sanaur’s quarters were a concentration of all that is pleasant and civilized in Rezhmia. The walls were thick but dry and frequently wore egg-tempera paintings of domestic subjects, goldfish and cats being popular themes. I lived among these paintings for years and never wondered about their quality, but now for a moment I felt I was seeing them through new eyes. Count Dinaos’s eyes, to be exact. I wondered if he would find these pretty murals beneath contempt.

  Next to smokeless oil lamps, men and women sat reading. In Velonya the women would more likely have been doing embroidery or plain sewing, and the men… well, drinking beer, I guess, and not in a cozy parlor.

  I saw no one I remembered, and the household very politely did not stare as we passed. Perhaps they were simply not interested.

  We found my royal “aunt” in a chamber by herself, and she was doing embroidery. She paused her needle as we entered the room, and rubbed the heels of her hands over her eyes.

  “There is not really enough light for this,” she said. “But I promised it would be ready for Alie’s birthday.”

  I bowed and Navvie curtseyed. “Sanaur’l Maigeret,” we said together. The captain departed without a word.

  The sanaur’l was, like most of my family, rather short. She stood, taking the lamp in her hand and held it first to my face, then to Navvie’s . “You are worn,” she stated, and she told us to sit down.

  “I am sorry about your friend, nephew.”

  It took me a moment. “You mean Rudof, king of Velonya?”

  “Yes. I am very sorry.” Her mouth tightened in a rueful smile. “More sorry than you can imagine. It may lose me my regency. It may even lose Nadell his crown.”

  Not so many years ago, it was very common for a young sanaur of Rezhmia to lose his crown, by the simple expedient of being killed. The latest attempt upon a sanaur, however, was at least twenty-five years previous to this time. I had played a stupid part in this attempt, and a slightly more clever role in preventing the assassination. I hoped that Maigeret was not talking about murder.

  “Because relations with Velonya are becoming strained?”

  She sighed and crossed her neat ankles. My “aunt” is considerably younger than I, and did she not have to project the role of sanaur-mother to all the world, she might have passed for a youngster herself. But she is not young-hearted.

  “Because, Nazhuret, we will be at war with Velonya before the new year is out.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Navvie reel in her chair. Had she not considered this possibility? It had been in my mind since I heard of the death of Rudof.

  “You see, the new regime is weak and unsupported as of yet, and it is most definitely not our friend. Why would we wait until it has eliminated all dissension at home and is ready to strike at us with a combat-trained soldiery?”

  “Are you sure they will strike, Sanaur’l Maigeret?” asked Navvie, though by protocol she should have kept her mouth shut in the p
resence of Maigeret.

  The lady did not seem to care about protocol. “I suspect it. Others here are certain. Think, child: war is a financial gamble, but civil war is without possibility of gain. Before Rudof’s death, the Velonyan army was moderate and professional. Now it has to be swollen by press and conscription, all of which will have to be supported somehow. An army assembled and in debt must attack until it is paid or destroyed.

  “Besides—knowing that it is in the interest of Rezhmia to attack, the Vestings will feel forced to anticipate us.”

  It was in my mind to ask Maigeret who among the court was more certain than she of Velonya’s aggressive intent, but my daughter cut me off.

  “What if the rebellion succeeds, Sanaur’l Maigeret? What if a new government reflects the policies of King Rudof?”

  Maigeret looked blandly at Navvie. The sanaur’l was only a few inches taller than my daughter, and only five years older, but they seemed nothing alike at this moment. “Are you planning to revenge your godfather, Nahvah Howdlidn? Or possibly to set your father up in his place?”

  Navvie wore a gambler’s face that would have done credit to Arlin, but I could see she was startled, first to be accused of such temerity and second to find that the regent of Rezhmia remembered her mother’s family name. “It would be late for that, Sanaur’l. After all the years he has refused Rudof’s offer to restore Norwess, who would back him now in a claim for the whole nation?”

  Maigeret nodded, as though Navvie had said something completely different. “The crown of Rezhmia would, granddaughter. About that all factions here agree.” She turned back to me.

  “With arms light and arms heavy and with our full standing infantry we will enforce and recognize your claim.

  “There is the only success possible to your rebellion, granddaughter,” she said to Navvie, and “There is the only hope for your father’s nation,” to me.

  I was intensely angry all of a sudden, and did not know at whom. “It is not my father’s nation’ but my own nation, Sanaur’l, and I am not a Rezhmian tool.”

  “No. As it happens, Rezhmia is your tool at the moment, and not by our own choice.”

  I blinked, as though she had waved a fist in my face. “You think I am part of this rebellion, Maigeret? I had nothing to do with it. I have not been in Velonya for over two years.”

  “Yet it formed around you like ice around a rock in the stream. You are the philosopher, the iconoclast, a foreigner in your own land. Twenty years ago the blockheads in Vestinglon were calling you ‘Rudof’s sorcerer.’ I remember that.”

  “I must contradict the sanaur’l. That was what they called Powl Inpress, earl of Daraln.”

  She shook her stubborn head. “No, that was thirty years ago. I have paid some attention to western politics, against the chance this day would come. Listen to me carefully, nephew, and don’t answer out of hand.

  “These people have built their rebellion upon what you stand for and, in fact, around your name. Whether you like it or not—can you let them fail?”

  “My dear aunt, such a plea is unworthy of you! You don’t care a turd for ‘all I stand for,’ whether science, philosophy, Velonyan justice, or Velonyan survival.”

  “Not a turd,” she agreed, with a thin smile. “Yet I’m telling the perfect truth.”

  “I’ve never found a perfect truth in my life,” I told her. “Or at least nothing I could tell to someone else.” I stood up. “Am I under arrest, Sanaur’l Maigeret?”

  “No,” she said. Not “No, of course not,” but merely “No.” Navvie rose with me, but turned again to the sanaur’l, frowning intently as though she would say something. I was afraid she might, and I dragged her along by one hand.

  This time no soldiers accompanied us through the pleasant chambers of the Towers. Well-dressed people were still reading beside lamps that did not smoke. I envied them.

  “Do you remember, Navvie, how the king’s great-great grandfather—I mean Rudof’s great-great grandfather—accepted the help of Sekret tribesmen to discourage the Felonk and Peleolonk raiders who had wasted the Sea Islands north of Vestinglon?”

  “I know all that, Papa. Once you invite in the stranger you cannot invite him out again. But we still own the Sea Islands, don’t we?”

  “What ‘we’ is this? The language there is not Velonyie. The faces are not Velonyan.”

  She laughed and pulled against my arm, to slow my rapid stalk through the palace. “Look who is talking about a Velonyan face!”

  The outer door was opened by a footman, who seemed to fear I would smash through it headfirst. Perhaps I would have. The cold air was a relief. There were stars in the sky, and (if I recall correctly) a moon rising gibbous, its outline wavering from the heat of a thousand hearth fires. “So you think that at this late date we should throw aside all of Powl’s teaching and embrace the affairs of nations? He said, ‘Stay out of the reach of officialdom. It will be deadly to you.’ He also said about me, ‘He would not be a good king. Not in any world like this one.’”

  “And he said, ‘Who is dead—the one who changed, or the one who stopped changing?’”

  Suddenly the cold was no relief; it froze me to the bone. “I have spent all my life, Navvie…”

  “But don’t listen to Powl, or whatever looked like Powl and sounded like him. Erase all of Powl for once, Papa: all the rules, the observations, the opinions. We are in the middle of something, and our inaction will cause as many things to happen as our actions.” Her breath was making little silver clouds, and her face was white against the darkness. “Any movement of my hand, tonight, will ripple out in all directions. I feel it, Papa. I don’t know what leads to what, but I know we’re at the center of it all.”

  It was very quiet when she finished speaking, and I thought I could hear water freezing, crackling on the stone walls. “Everyone’s always at the center of it all, Nahvah. Only sometimes do some of us feel it.

  “I’m tired to death,” I said, and we went to the inn without another word.

  That night I had a dream in which I was back at Sordaling Military School, changing the beds. I did not know any of the people I saw, neither masters nor pupils, but I overheard a master in the hall outside the dormitory saying, “He’s an old boy. A very, very old boy.” I glanced down at my hands and they were white and corrugated. I left the beds and walked to the shaving mirror on one wall, in great trepidation as to what I might find, but in the rectangle of pocked and smeary glass I saw only the blue sky. When it occurred to me that I was indoors, and in a long dark chamber, I was so startled I woke up.

  I didn’t get back to sleep again that night, but waited through the darkness for there to be light enough to move about. I heard nothing from the hall except the bootboy returning people’s shoes about an hour before dawn. That is how I know that Navvie must have left the inn fairly early in the night.

  She left me a note. I don’t have it word by word in memory, though I read it over so many times I should. It was to the effect that she had things to do, and they might not now be the same things I had to do, and so farewell for the present. There was something in the phrasing, or in the general audacity of it, that reminded me of her mother. She also asked me, very politely, not to follow her.

  I was at the Towers shortly after sunup, asking to see my aunt the sanaur’l again. The first person I spoke to said it was not possible, the second said I had picked a very bad day for it, and the third who saw me was Maigeret,

  “No, nephew. I would not make arrangements with your Nahvah behind your back. Such tactics would not work in the long run. Where do you think she has gone?”

  Neat hands put a large breakfast in front of us. It seemed as alien to me as the runes of East Sekret. “To Norwess. That I know. To see Jeram, who started this whole thing.”

  “The young priest of the rebellion? Has she then a tenderness for him?”

  My laughter was rude. “Tenderness? Good God, no. Or I hope not. No—he’s just the center of this
storm, and if anything is to be done about it, it is to be done at Norwess. She knows that much.”

  Maigeret glanced narrowly at me. “And so do you, apparently.”

  I was playing with a slice of melon as I talked. It was greenish-white like the crescent moon in fog. I wondered where the hothouses were that could provide such fruit in midwinter. “I may have less hope something can be done.”

  She nodded, feeling cynicism call to cynicism, or perhaps merely age to age. “But now you will have to go to Norwess anyway, to bring back your daughter.”

  I tried eating the melon. It tasted like midwinter. “No, Sanaur’l. She is almost thirty years old. And trained from childhood to be unobtrusive when she can and to protect herself when concealment is impossible. No woman in the North is better prepared for travel than Navvie, and few men. She should have left me long ago; I only regret the circumstances. I regret all these circumstances.”

  “So what will you do?” she asked me, as one might ask what a person will do now that the red boots he was going to wear are found to have a hole in them. She ate two hothouse grapes and didn’t look up for my answer.

  “I’ll go to Norwess,” I said, and then Maigeret did look up.

  “I’ll go to Norwess, but not to haul back my erring daughter. I’ll go for the same reason she went—to see how things are.”

  I pulled back my chair and stood over Maigeret. That was not courtly behavior, but I was pressed for time. “May I have a good horse?”

  The sanaur’l nodded. “You can have more than that.”

  “And if—when I return, say in ten days, if I decide I want the support of Rezhmia?

  Maigeret also rose. “I can give no promises. Ten days may change a lot.”

  I said I didn’t expect promises, and I bowed out.

  Though I don’t remember the horse on which I rode into the City, I do remember the horse on which I rode out the next day. More surprisingly, I remember clearly one upon which I refused to ride: the one presented to me by the proud court livery as a mark of favor.