Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal Page 3

  At the moment, though, he could do nothing but master himself into calm immobility so as not to embarrass his mepi in front of the city-Watch, three of whose cruisers came howling around the corner down the road and settled out of hover in front of the house with an earsplitting whine of signallers and the roar of impellers shutting down. A crowd of white-uniformed proctors spilled out of them and immediately surrounded the Queen and Rho, at a courteous distance of course, all vying to be first to bend themselves double and make the appropriate honorific gestures.

  The proctors were already babbling apologies, every other phrase of which seemed to be “noble Sunborn”. Rho’s temper was threatening to boil over, but this too he tamped down as his queenly mother gracefully accepted all the bowing and scraping and seemed more concerned with alleviating the proctors’ anxieties than with berating them for not having had a security presence in front of the house, as they normally did when one of the royal household was out and about on foot.

  Let alone two, Rho thought. He cared little about this for his own sake. Who’d waste their time killing me, after all? But where his mother and father were concerned—and especially his mother—

  Rho was going cold and hot by turns with fear and anger, and around him things began going by in something of a blur—the staff passing the still-unconscious attackers over to the Watch and picking up some of their dropped belongings to be sent along with them, his lady mother debriefing them. ”No, they won’t need special care… the spellweb I threw over them merely damped their neural chemistry down for a bit. It’ll be an hour or so before they’re conscious, so just make them secure and be certain they’re not in a way to injure themselves when they wake. They may be a bit disoriented.”

  And then the limp bodies were loaded into another of the city-Watch cruisers, and the Queen of Wellakh called after the proctors as they (bowing) got back into their vehicles, “And do make sure these cubes are sent back to us, won’t you? We sent easily five of them along with the last batch, but someone forgot to return them and it’s such a nuisance to configure new ones…”

  Rho watched the cruisers lift up and arrow away, knowing perfectly well that at least part of the sense of slight unreality he was experiencing at the moment was shock. With an eye to handling such situations, he had been counselled by professionals in all the possible modes of crisis management practically since he could speak. But nothing like this has ever happened before, he thought, and it’s not working, it’s not—

  “My son,” the soft voice said from a little above him. Rho’s head snapped up. His mother was tall even for a Wellakhit of royal line, and though the assumption in the family was that his height was coming to him from her, he still had a ways to go to catch up. Now she gazed down at him and said, “Everyone else has gone in, my Prince; we might as well go too.”

  And indeed there the two of them were, standing outside the city-house all by themselves, with his mother training a most concerned and perceiving look on him. “Of course, royal lady,” Rho said, putting his arm through hers and turning her toward the little postern-door, which the house staff had left open for them.

  “Your royal father will be home from his meetings shortly,” she said as they stepped through the door into the gravel and fine-clipped shrubbery of the front courtyard, “and once he hears about the fruitcloth, there will doubtless be no other subject of conversation for a while. So if there is anything you feel the need to tell me…”

  I am useless, Rho thought, and a waste of space as your son, and as Sunborn; and as future Guarantors of Wellakh go, I am the least useful one ever to be seen by the light of our troublesome sun.

  “Nothing, my Queen,” Rho said. “Let us by all means go in.”

  ***

  Despite his attempt to get hold of himself, nothing much registered for Rho as they made their way through the formal front entry and the long cool high-ceilinged hallway leading out of it to the downstairs meeting rooms, and past those to the downstairs common room. The front spaces were broad white-walled rooms purposely underdecorated except with artworks donated by cultural organizations and citystates across the planet, and—like all the furniture in these areas—rather characterless. (”When you choose your furnishings to keep from annoying anyone,” he’d heard his father say more than once, “why would it be surprising that it doesn’t much appeal to anyone, either?”)

  In the common room that looked out on the back of the property and its little walled garden, at least the furniture was more comfortable. There were scattered couches, a viewing and entertainment wall, and in the arc of the weapons-proof window-doors that let out into the garden sat a trio of deep comfortable chairs, each with its little table beside it. Off to one side was the staircase up to the family’s private rooms and the little intimate lounge. Rho glanced at it and realized he suddenly felt as if he didn’t even have the energy to get up those stairs.

  “Sit down, my son,” said Miril, “before you fall down. I’ll fetch you something to drink.”

  She had dropped out of kings’-speak and into the Speech. “Noble mother,” Rho said, “the staff—”

  “I sent them home early. We’re done with the day’s business; Lethme the house-steward is locking up even now. Sit!”

  Rho sat in his chair, while his mother waved open the wall opposite the entertainment window and revealed the little food suite hidden there. She began rooting about the various shelves and cupboards there, making a couple of small sounds of annoyance on not finding what she wanted immediately. But then she rarely bothered with the cooking suite in town, and only rarely in Sunplace; that was a business she left to Rho’s royal father. He made it a point to deal with the family’s food, either in terms of ordering it or cooking it, claiming that if he was left no leisure to fulfill most of a Wellakhit husband’s traditional roles, he would at least fulfill that one.

  Rho’s lady mother, meantime, finally found the cups, and then came up with a flask from which she poured. Watching her, Rho sighed and leaned his head back against the high back of his chair. This little triangle of space was where the three of them shared their meals, when all their schedules could be made to mesh—not normally an easy task. Between the Queen’s business handling the Sunborns’ relationship with the Wellakhit world governing body and those of individual polities and citystates, and his royal father’s duties supervising the planet’s strictly mechanical Sunwatch facilities and archival data, and of course standing the wizardly parts of the Watch himself, and Rho’s lesson-schedule, which often involved supervised trips around the world he would someday rule, there were days when all of them left their couches before Thahit showed his face and didn’t find them again until he’d been set for many hours.

  And my whole life is going to be like this, Rho thought, looking out the projectile-proof glass at the tidy little garden. Here I’ll live and die, bound to the service of a star that’s already tried to kill our planet once, and tries the trick again every so often. Chained to a world that’s half maimed and a populace that’s half convinced it would be better off without the whole lot of us…

  “Roshaun!”

  He blinked at the glass beaker that was being held in front of him, full of the clear tangy whiteberry draft he favored. “My thanks, mepi,” he said, took it, and drank about half of it in three gulps.

  Her free hand dropped to his shoulder. “I used to get quite dry at such times,” Miril said.

  “And what do you do now?”

  The Queen sighed. “Refuse to allow them the luxury of disrupting my routine.”

  As usual, she’d managed to answer the question he hadn’t asked. He opened his mouth to ask her “Would you please tell me how you do that?” when a soft chime came from a space under the spiral of the staircase to the upper floor.

  It was a place that for the early part of Rho’s childhood had been fenced off with a little box of railings (and after that, when he got overly curious, with a day-and-night forcefield) until he was old enough to
fully understand that someone might appear there at any time of the night or day without warning. Even then, his taki had had to take him out into the barren lands on the scarred side with a portable transit cube and show him what happened when a chunk of matter tried to materialize inside another one. Rho’s wild applause at the result had made his father cover his eyes… though after that he stayed away from that spot under the stairs unless mepi or taki actually took him there while holding him by the hand.

  “Earlier than I had thought,” Miril said, heading back over to the food suite for another flask. And indeed, dissolving into presence in the padspace, there he came in his majesty: Nelaid ke Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am Antev det Nuiiliat, Brother of the Sun, Lord of Wellakh, the Guarantor of Thahit—with his long red-golden hair knotted back in a series of more or less effective loops, in trousers that were surprisingly grimy, and wearing a tunic all smudged.

  He stood still for a moment, waiting for the final little isosolenoid click that confirmed the transport process had completed itself and made the pad safe, and then stepped off, brushing his robes down and producing a small cloud of haze about himself. “My Queen, my Prince,” he said, “you would not believe the amount of dust that has appeared in those archives. The new document-environment management system the government has installed is utterly useless. After all this trouble and consultation, it apparently must all be done again.”

  “Perhaps you should see to it yourself, my King,” Miril said, coming over to him and holding out another beaker, this one magenta-red with a distillation of piraunin must.

  He took it from her and leaned close to lay his cheek against hers before drinking. “One wonders what the point might be in delegation,” Nelaid said, “when the event merely proves that one must do anything oneself that needs to be done rightly.” He had a long draft from the beaker, and then another. “The plastic- and metal-based archival materials have already suffered; the humidity in that place is not being properly offset. Another few months of that and the oldest scrolls and codices would have gone to dust, and we’d have to ask the Aethyrs every time we wanted to know what had been in them.”

  “They have enough to do, I would say,” Miril said, turning a dry smile on her royal spouse. “Greet your son, my husband. And sit down with that; this isn’t a street stall.”

  His father came over to Rho and bent over him and stroked his hair. “My Prince—”

  “Noble sire,” Rho said, looking up into that long, calm face and wishing that some day he could find some of the unshakable dignity it always wore, even when troubled or angry or off-balance, even when dressed more like a cleaning worker than a King, and covered with library dust. The amber eyes looked thoughtfully into his, yet betrayed no response to what they saw there.

  “Nelaid,” Miril said. Nelaid’s eyes flickered toward the Queen of Wellakh and then back to Rho, a small shared joke, private for as long as neither of them let her see what was happening: see how she rules us as she rules the rest of the planet through us? But Rho discovered it was harder than usual today to find that funny. And he saw his father’s eyes register that, and narrow a little in concern before he composed his face and turned away to sit down in his chair as commanded.

  “I should be getting you something to eat,” the King of Wellakh said to his queen as he sat down in his chair and took another pull at his drink.

  “I’ll do that for once,” said Miril, turning her attention back to the food suite. “You will shed dust into everyone’s food otherwise. I can see it still falling off you. Sit quiet now and drink your must.”

  He sat quiet and drank, but his eyes were still on Rho, who had to shift his gaze after a moment. “Tell me of your day,” Nelaid said to Miril, though his eyes were on his son as he said it.

  So she told him, and it was a tale of the normal daily round of meetings and audiences and monstrations—for a Sunborn while in royal office, whether by marriage or by rule, was desired (like the Sun) to be available for viewing by those who depended upon one or the other of them. In the Sunborn’s case, it was more a requirement than a request, one that Rho so far had only needed to observe for fairly rare ceremonial occasions. But where others might ride or fly about their business, his royal sire and lady mother very often were required to walk, so that they could be seen. (”And so that our people may take the occasional shot at us without being unduly discommoded by our household security,” Rho remembered his father saying some years back.)

  “—and got to the market finally,” his mother was saying, “and that at least proved worth the trip.” And without warning she leaned over him in his chair, and on his table put down a little platter with narrow slices of amber and crimson fruitcloth on it, along with some plain pale flat bread and a dollop of bittersweet relish.

  Nelaid’s expression suddenly lost its gravity and went completely astonished, and at that Rho had to smile. Fruitcloth was difficult to make, very seasonal, and could be sourced from only a few artisanal suppliers, so even a Sunlord had to fight to get a share. “My excellent Queen,” he said. “How did you come by this—”

  “There’s a secret I’ll keep,” said Rho’s lady mother, looking smug. “I will take my advantages where I find them. And for you, noble son—” She put down another plate in front of him, this one with sliced barkbread on it, dark and aromatic and beautifully crisp.

  Rho tried to make approving noises and applied himself to the contents of the plate, trying to hide the truth of the situation, which was that chew it though he might and wait for the fierce dark burst of flavor that usually came, the barkbread tasted more like dust in his mouth right now than anything else he could recall. Possibly this was because at the same time he was also chewing over the feeling of utter helplessness that had assailed him in the park even as he ran toward her. Because there was nothing I could do. Nothing. My own mother. If she wasn’t a wizard, right there she would have died—

  Miril had sat down now in her own chair, between husband and son, and was segmenting a fist-sized, pale-skinned bluedrupe berry to go with some of the barkbread for herself. The conversation between her and Nelaid then veered back toward the meetings she had suffered through that afternoon, and for the first time Rho heard some weariness come back into her voice. His father’s eyes went to him again, doubtless putting together something from his expression and his general quietness. “So,” he said after a moment, “something more happened than mere shopping.”

  Miril sighed and shrugged a hand. “Out in the front,” she said. “Three objectors ran across from the park, just as Roshaun was coming out.”

  Nelaid sat up straighter. “But you’re quite all right, my Queen?”

  “Quite,” she said, having another drink of her own must. “None of them got close enough even to touch me.”

  “Anyone we know? Were you able to—”

  “Hear them? Oh quite clearly, Nelaid, they were broadcasting their intentions so. The tallest one you’ll see in the remand report when the city-Watch gets it to us, that was one of ke Mebhhan’s people—you would have seen him in that last meeting with the Loyal Opposition. Remember the one who ate half the pikith at the buffet afterwards?”

  “Oh, that one.” Nelaid scowled. “Raised in an outbuilding, to judge by his manners.”

  Rho blinked at that. As if anyone’s manners, past, present or future, mattered compared to the fact that they had just tried to kill someone? —and not just any someone, but the Lady of the Lands of Wellakh, the Sister of the Sun, one of those who put her shadow between Wellakh’s people and their unruly star. His mother—

  Yet they went on talking about the attack as if they were discussing some annoying but minor infraction. How can they be so calm about this! She could have died—

  “His name is eluding me at the moment.”

  “It’s something north-country,” Miril said, “from up the Seis Peninsula somewhere. …Tebemer, that was it.” Miril smiled at her plate, sourly amused. “He’d h
ave far preferred to stick a chey in me if he could have, but he feared to come so close lest I touch him and curse him.”

  “I will curse him enough for both of us,” Nelaid said very softly.

  “Don’t jest, my noble love,” Miril said. “It ill befits a wizard to wish harm on one in our care. And perhaps his stupidity’s curse enough. Either way, leave him to the Aethyrs.”

  Nelaid didn’t look inclined to wait until the Aethyrs cleared time in their schedules. “So they didn’t have any real chance to harm you—”

  “Indeed not.” She sniffed in amusement. “Am I any less a wizard than I was yesterday? And I was busy, but not that busy. Have you had a bad day? You should know not to be troubled by this.”

  “Well, the Aethyrs be thanked then.”

  “Yes indeed. Meanwhile we should possibly have a word with the city-Watch’s security supervisor about our walkabout routines.”

  Nelaid sighed too. “Yes, they do sometimes seem to believe that we are invulnerable, do they not—”

  Rho couldn’t bear it, just couldn’t stand it another minute. “Royal father!”

  Nelaid turned to him in surprise and produced an expression of bemusement. “Yes, Roshaun?”

  Rho wanted to throw his arms in the air and get up and stamp around the room and yell in frustration, but there were certain things one did not do in front of his father, and they had nothing to do with him being King of Wellakh. “Can we not do something?”

  “Your mother has,” Nelaid said. “You know the way of it, princely son. Your mother is the most senior wizard of her line, as I am of mine, and all Wellakh’s people are in our care—”

  “They may be, but some of them don’t seem to care much about you. Just so long as you keep the sun from flaring again and killing the other half of the planet!”

  His father paused. Rho knew the meaning of such long pauses: his father had scented the trouble in the air and was working out how to deal with it. Eventually he said, “Well, that is our job.”