by Ada Palmer
I believe Ockham is the only person in the world who can address the Duke as ‘Member President’ and win a smile. From others it is a reminder of discomfort, of disconnect, too contemporary for this living fossil dredged back from the aristocratic days of yore by DNA retrieval and Madame’s strange education. His Grace is an exile in time, and it is madness to him that his subjects are his by vote, and not by birth or conquest. But strict, soldierly Ockham, and the absoluteness with which he almost-salutes his leader, that, at least, to this living anachronism named Ganymede, feels right.
“I agree it is a risk,” the Duke President answered, “but Perry is correct, we must consider it. There is no return if MASON takes a true majority. We must prepare means to prevent that, even if it might increase the risk of exposure. Do you agree, Andō?”
The Mitsubishi Chief Director paused, brows locked.
Casimir Perry is not a man to let a silence last. “All Martin Guildbreaker has is the alignment of some of Cato’s suicide attempts with some crashes. Cato’s own techniques are unique each time, no pattern, untraceable. The risk of O.S. being exposed because of this one hit is tiny compared to the disaster which is certain. A Masonic majority, not just in our lifetimes but this year! What was O.S. created for if not for this?”
Gazing down at the pleading European as grimly as storm-willed Poseidon, Andō gave his single, rigid nod.
Sun-bright Ganymede holds a different kind of grimness, just as chillingly divine. “Prepare for this hit, Ockham, but take no action yet. Have Cato choose a means, then look it over yourself and see what flaws you can detect. I don’t want to give this order, but I want you ready if I have to. Meanwhile we shall, all of us, try every other means we can to calm the Cousin situation, and to deflect Martin and Papadelias.”
Ockham nodded, his shoulders easing at the promise of delay. “I’ll prepare the hit right away, Member President, but I hope we will not need it.”
“You will divide your efforts between preparing this hit, and finding Sniper. All my personal forces are at your disposal, and if you want official Hive forces, request anything you like, no need to check with me.”
“Thank you, Member President.”
“Now, leave us. We have other business to discuss.”
“Yes, Member President.” It must be from old war movies that Ockham learned to click his heels like that, so the clean metal frames which vein his deerskin boots sing like chimes.
Andō breathed a long sigh, shifting from a formal to a friendly posture as Ockham latched the door behind him. In fact they all shifted, shoulders stretching, hips relaxing, legs sprawled at ease, postures of comfort, now that the subordinate was no longer there to make them wear their masks.
Speech did not change so fast. “I must clear this possible hit with the other seven Directors,” Andō began, “but they’re in no position to argue at the moment.”
Perry frowned. “Seven? You still haven’t told Director Bandyopadhyay about O.S.?”
“Nor do I intend to,” the Chief Director answered stonily. “Greenpeace was not part of this arrangement before the merger, and is not now.”
Prime Minister Perry leaned back with a hissing sigh. “I still think it’s risky trying to conceal O.S. from one of your Nine Directors, while all the others know. Any one of them could tip off Bandyopadhyay, and earn a lot of favors in return. If you tell them yourself, you get the favors.”
Andō’s eyes narrowed. “Your lack of confidence in my fellow Directors verges on insult, Perry. The Greenpeace-Mitsubishi merger was a source of strength, not weakness, and we have kept Greenpeace Directors successfully at arm’s length for more than sixty years. Do not presume our strat balance is as deceitful and self-defeating as your own.”
The European sighed contrition. “I’m sorry if it seemed like a criticism. I just meant it as advice, really. Things are much more peaceful and manageable on my end now that I’ve told the rest of my coalition leadership about O.S. It’s united us, both with the feeling that we have an extra tool in our belts, and with the knowledge that, if one of us sells out, we all go down.”
Ganymede’s gold brows knit. “You told your entire coalition about O.S.?”
Perry adjusted the Polish strat band around his upper arm. “Why not? I’ve been head of the Special Means Committee for almost twenty years; most of my close allies either knew or suspected what that really meant. It was an administrative nightmare operating O.S. when it had to be secret from the Prime Minister, the Commission, the European Council, and my own personal coalition. Now that His Inconveniently Catholic Majesty isn’t in charge anymore, there’s no reason to keep things so compartmentalized.”
The Duke’s light fingers trembled. “You’re talking about how many allies here? Five? Ten?” He waited. “Twenty?” Still no nod. “More?”
“Most of my coalition already knew. It was no end of difficulty trying to run Europe’s end of O.S. alone while Spain was Prime Minister, trying to guess what the Hive needed when most of our leadership didn’t know I was important enough to bother informing of pending trouble. I had to have allies who knew, just to have enough ears to the ground to know when to act. Andō does the same.”
Ganymede frowned. “Andō asks permission every time they discuss my assassins with any breathing soul.”
Perry gave a tired smile. “Then I envy Andō, having time to visit you so often.”
The Duke President glared, and glared more when he caught a smirk on Andō’s face. “Levity has no place in this. Every person who knows is that much more danger.”
“Andō has told their allies, I told mine.”
“Seven Board Directors is not fifty-plus unstable coalition allies.”
“It was the right call,” Perry insisted. “It’s smoothed everything. I finally have Parliament in hand, really in hand. Now that they know I can call on a power like that, they snap to like a Familiaris in front of MASON!”
“You will not reveal O.S. to anyone else without my express permission. Ever.”
Perry sighed his consent. “I’ll check with you whenever I can, but sometimes I need the extra leverage at a moment’s notice.”
“Ever,” Ganymede repeated.
“I’ll do my best. I’ll always tell you afterward.”
“You will find your own means to keep your house in order, or I shall send a housekeeper.”
Perry’s eyes glittered coldly between their nests of care-lines. “I’ll thank you to leave Europe to the European.”
At that the Duc de la Trémoïlle rose to his feet like wrathful dawn. “Your presence in my house is a privilege, Perry. You advise me on the use of my assassins as a privilege. You access my ba’sibs at Madame’s as a privilege. You keep your precious coalition and your seat because I refrain from calling a few friends to say I am tired of you. I do not need to threaten to expose how you used Ziven Racer to oust Spain from office; I can unseat you by hinting that I wish it so. You will not insult me ever again. And you will not speak of my O.S. to any breathing being.”
The Prime Minister drew slow breaths, staring up at backlit Ganymede, whose blazing mane turned his pale face to silhouette, like the moon at the eclipsing of the sun. What is that that Perry swallows down now? Words? Or pride? “Yes, Your Grace.” He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. I’ll never do anything like it again.”
The eclipse passed. “You will supply me with a list of everyone who knows, and you will not question how I choose to deal with them.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Not quite all pride was swallowed. “Doesn’t Andō get a chiding too?”
Blue diamond eyes flashed murder. “What for?”
“Me telling my allies caused nothing, just stability. Shanghai and Beijing brought traitors into the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ itself! It was Andō’s job to vet the Mitsubishi Special Guard, make sure they were the loyal among the loyal. And there’s the Canner Device.”
Andō paused in pacing the room, his stony frown darkening to something
worse, a stony smile. “What about the Canner Device?”
Perry looked nervous. “You … you made it, didn’t you? Japan keeps coming up in all of the reports. It’s a big, sophisticated tool, hijacking the entire tracker system, millions of tracker signals at once. You’ve had it for more than a decade and never shared it with us? This alliance is supposed to be complete, coequal, sharing all we have to guard our stability against MASON’s. The only reason to hide something like that from allies is if you plan to use it against us.”
Ganymede turned on Andō, anger on his golden brows. “Is this true?”
Andō shrugged, still smiling. “I have no plans to use the Canner Device against you or anyone.”
“But it’s true? You made it?”
Still the Chief Director smiled. “A predecessor made it.”
Hurt mixed with anger on the Duke’s face. “You knew who made the Canner Device? You didn’t tell me?”
Andō stepped close enough to smile down at the delicate Duke. “You didn’t need to worry yourself about it.”
Gold brows tightened. “That isn’t your decisi—”
“Yes it is.”
Ganymede stared up at him. “You cannot hide a thing as serious as—”
A kiss rendered the Duke mute as Andō seized him, a fast, practiced embrace which pinned the Duke’s slim arms to his sides. Ganymede’s eyes answered the kiss with wet anger, then some moments of serene enjoyment, then anger again as he craned his neck away. “Not…” He stopped—how could he finish? Not here? Not now? Not in front of this worm Perry? Any of those would have proved to Perry that elsewhere, elsewhen, the Duke would have submitted.
“What?” Andō answered with a sibling’s nonchalance. “Perry’s been invited upstairs, it’s nothing they’re not going to see a thousand times.” He pressed the Duke President against a wall and took his lips a second time.
“Upstairs!” Perry cried in full-bodied delight. “You asked Madame? I’m in?”
Andō has practiced this, one arm to pin the fragile Duke in place, the other down his trousers to tickle Ganymede’s seat of pleasure, and drive all words from his lips with gasps of joy. “Not me.” Ando’s words took turns with kisses. “I convinced Spain … to ask Madame … It had to come … from them … from me it … might’ve seemed an insult … You’ll be inducted … tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Different kinds of delight chased each other across Perry’s rapt face. “Does this mean Madame approves of me staying Prime Minister? The others approve? MASON approves?”
“They’re reconciled to you … Eventually they might want … to shunt you off … some high office in Romanova … Senate Speaker maybe … reinstate Spain … but you’re inside now … we’ll keep you at the top … somewhere.”
“I did it?” Perry voiced a little laugh, slow, like a timid chick, uncertain whether it is truly time to leave the shell. “I made it? Madame’s inner circle. It’s done. I’m done.”
“I’ve paid your dues for this year. I know you’ve nowhere near the means to pay yourself, but we’ll discuss the balance of your debts in time.”
“Thank you!” Perry’s voice cracked. “Andō, thank you! I can never th—”
“No, you never can, and never will.”
The Prime Minister froze, then bowed his head. “You won’t regret this, Andō, both of you, I swear. I’ll make you glad to be my sponsors, every hour, every day!” Sponsor was an interesting word choice, avoiding the dread word ‘patron’ as the Servicer Program avoids the dread word ‘slave.’ Sponsor feels so legitimate.
“I have high expectations,” Andō warned.
Perry filled himself with a deep breath. “I’ll exceed them.”
Ganymede wriggled in Andō’s grip. “Stop. This is serious. The Cann—”
Again Andō stole the Duke’s words with a long kiss. “The Canner Device?” he finished. “That’s old business. Don’t worry your head about it. The guilty have been well punished. It’s done.”
Ganymede wriggled. “No, you—uuuh.” A fresh gasp broke his words.
“It’s done.”
I do not know, reader, whether Andō mounted Ganymede here in front of Perry or spared him; it is the sort of detail a gentleman omits in interview. Perhaps Andō backed off, but, after Ganymede’s show of ducal fire at Perry, Andō might have taken this chance to drive home to both the others that he is and ever shall be first among (un)equals. Besides, I know Andō enjoys how the Duke’s unwilling buttocks clench like a virgin’s on these rare occasions when he is not ‘in the mood.’ You may choose for yourself, reader, how thorough a congress to imagine.
“Is this a perk that comes with being invited upstairs?” Perry asked, a freshness awakening in his face as he watched, as when a dozing dog pricks up its ears at footsteps.
Andō enjoyed that question. “Watching is. The twins are one flesh, and both of them are mine, as sure as man and wife and otherwife.” Fresh touches made sure Ganymede had no breath to contradict. “I paid for them, more money than you’ll see in your lifetime. The boy I leave free to share himself when he fancies, but the last man who glanced too long at Danaë is not here to remember it.”
“Understood.” The trial-weathered Prime Minister smiled as he stretched back to watch politics play out before him. “I really can never thank you enough, Andō. Tomorrow night. It hardly feels real; just one more night.”
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
Providence
Share now my horror, reader, as a liveried footman returns my confiscated tracker, and the first sight in my feed is Carlyle Foster stepping across the threshold of Madame’s. Dominic plays our puppet strings with a musician’s precision, like the grim matron who made him. He knew just how long he could keep me off the tracker network before Papadelias would go berserk, so he had my tracker delivered to my hands minutes before the Commissioner General would have called the Romanovan cavalry, and seconds after our sweet young sensayer had passed the door. That door, festive with its gilded ironwork of twining vines; I would have plastered it with warnings to match the gates of Hell, had I been free to reach it before Carlyle. Did Dominic know that I had tapped Carlyle’s feed? That I watched, live, as a pair of blushing housemaids swept the Cousin up, happy to serve as teeth for Dominic’s bear-trap. “Sister Heloïse is expecting you,” they crooned. “She’s just through here. She’s so been looking forward to your visit.” Their lies poured out like syrup as they coaxed their victim on, just a little further, through these suites, these doors, these bolts. I groaned inside. My warning had failed to save Carlyle, the instructions I had left with my fellow Servicers when I left them packing up Bridger’s toys to ship to Sniper’s doll museum: warn Carlyle to stay away, far away from Madame’s, from Dominic, and danger. But Carlyle had come fluttering to the flame, lured by the false invitation Dominic had sent in Heloïse’s name, and lured too by Carlyle’s conclusion that J.E.D.D. Mason was something not unlike a miracle. How confident the Cousin was that, in this golden age of peace and ever-watching trackers, a virgin with a bag of gold could walk across the Earth without danger. Our modern moths have bounced so many times off lightbulbs, they aren’t prepared for torches, and forget that wings can burn.
But thou canst save Carlyle, Mycroft. Thou art close at hand, yes? As I understand it, this whole house is thy large and roaming prison, strange haven from the wrathful world that calls anew for Mycroft Canner’s blood.
You are right, good reader. I am but four stories above the young sensayer, a few halls past screaming distance.
Thou must save Carlyle then. The Cousin is a fool to come, but still does not deserve what lies in wait.
Would that obedience were easy, compassionate master. But, while I may rival greyhounds over open ground, I am as helpless as any man in Madame’s labyrinth of doors and doorkeepers. I began at once to plead my way past the many checkpoints of the house, strong doors and their strong keepers, but even as I raced I feared that slow was too slow.
Call
on thy tracker, then, and warn the victim of the trap.
Alas, the sweet sensayer knew my name now. The ears of Carlyle Foster were deaf to the words of Mycroft Canner. If I called, Carlyle would cut me off in seconds. I might get in a sentence or two first, and I would save those for the true crisis moment, when it came. Better to head down in person, since a switch’s flick could not silence me if we stood face to face. So I raced, and watched, and dispatched a silent prayer too as I watched, on the off chance that This Universe’s God was not as deaf to me as was His priest. You may, if you wish to aid us, pray as well, reader. The Hand that weaves Providence knows everything from creation to infinity, and takes account of the future when He plans the past; if prayer has any power to sway Fate, then even though, from your perspective, Carlyle was either saved or not saved long ago, it could still be your prayer, now, as you read, that swayed the Judge. Free and righteous as you probably are, you may pray for any intervention you imagine: a timely call from a bash’mate, Kosala wandering by, a house fire. For myself, low creature that I am, I dared not ask so much: only that Fate might be so kind as to let Carlyle find Dominic in a gentle mood, as I had found him thirteen years ago, the first time I begged my way back into that house.
Should I share that scene too with you, reader? The gentler version of what Carlyle may be about to face? It was long ago, my first day as a slave, the day I donned my Servicer uniform, still hostile in my heart to the changes that were remaking me, and unused to coming as a suppliant. But I had to see Jehovah Mason again. Some weeks had passed since my trial, my first encounter with He Who Changed Me, and my soul was still one great wound after my transformation. My old self had been so armored in conviction that it had never hesitated, even as I made all the world my enemy. My new, raw self did not yet know to name these icy stab-wounds ‘doubt.’ I had to see Him again. If the only way was to throw myself upon the mercy of the looming dragon who seemed to control access to this Prince, so be it. I slipped my tracker, and slinked my way to the alley behind Madame’s. A young and fierce Chevalier dragged me inside, and hurled me at the feet of Brother Dominic, seventeen then and not yet ordained. How did kind Fate have me find him? Naked in his cell, his youth-firm breasts and hips just starting to swell with Venus’s fertility, all callously bare, as when a bandit chief plays with his drawn sword, watching the wide white eyes of prisoners follow his naked blade. Dominic’s posture was all power, his expression too as he dismissed the Chevalier only after a lazy, appraising stare which said that he could have enjoyed this servant during our meeting had it been worth his time. Brother Dominic chuckled at my stammering petition for an audience with He Who Had Shattered My Illusory World, and he consented at once to teach me of the real world, and what my place in it must be if I wished to have access to our Master. Dominic had pets in those days, gifts from Madame, a lion, a leopard, and a wolf bitch, almost tame, and as he lectured me on the Enlightenment, and secret politics, and the rules a slave must follow when addressing God, his pet beasts squabbled, competing to lick the meat-sweet monthly drippings from his cunt. Such a scene I prayed might wait for Carlyle Foster in Dominic’s room, but Providence was not so merciful.