The Princess Rory Thorne received her first official invitation to a Council session, at long last, shortly after her mother’s marriage to Regent Moss of the Free Worlds of Tadesh. The wedding itself had taken place off-world, in a neutral location—a little waypost on the Larish shipping lanes, in orbit around a desultory white dwarf—observed by diplomatic representation from the Merchants League and every free planet, consortium, and kingdom worth the name. Battleships from both parties wove complex and polite patterns around each other, scrupulously avoiding any military incidents while at the same time attempting to intimidate the other side.
The couple spent exactly one night together, to consummate both wedding and treaty, before returning to their respective territories to oversee the end of the War. Further negotiations and settlements took place via quantum-hex, over the course of seven weeks, as the War ended piece by decommissioned piece.
One of the settlements was the dispensation of Thorne assets. It was decided—first by heated argument and then by cold logic—that the Princess Rory should, at the earliest convenience, relocate to Urse. There, the cold logic went, she would be best able to learn the ways of her future subjects, renew her acquaintance with Prince Ivar, and prepare for a smooth transition after Ivar’s assumption of the throne and their subsequent marriage.
“You mean,” Rory said, when she heard the news, “I’m going to be a hostage.”
“Not just you,” the Vizier snapped. Recent events had eroded his polished, political veneer. But where water wears stones soft and round, the War and the Wedding had scraped him into hard edges, brittle and jagged and prone to cut without warning.
“Your mother is sending me, too, to be your advisor.”
Rory frowned. Grytt frowned. The Vizier, who was already frowning, wished he understood what the look meant, that passed between them. He shrugged a little deeper into his robes, and told himself it was winter draft that made his bones ache.
“The Council wants to see you, Rory, in this next session,” he added.
Another look passed between Rory and Grytt.
“Do they, now?” Rory murmured. “And why would that be? Not to ask my opinion, certainly.”
“The official agenda is the composition of your household on Urse.”
“My household? Myself, Grytt—and you?”
“And me, as your advisor. There will also be four security personnel. The Regent-Consort has obtained permission”—it galled him to use that word—“to send along some of our house guard, for appearance. Although your residence, like our embassy, is considered Thorne sovereign territory, you will not live in the embassy compound. You are the princess, not a diplomat.”
Grytt stirred and pointed her unmatched eyes at the Vizier, squinting past her nose as if she were sighting down a rifle’s barrel. “That’s a bit of a middle finger, isn’t it? We’re saying Rory’s not safe in Urse?”
“No.” Rory looked thoughtful. “It’s about appearances. It’s about me looking like a sovereign representative instead of the hostage everyone knows I really am. It’s performance. Just like when Moss comes here with his matched set of muscle who answer to no one save him.”
“Political theatre, yes.” The Vizier folded his hands. He made note that Rory used the Regent’s surname, rather his title. Indicative of a not-so-secret disrespect, he thought, which might indicate an understandably unhappy sixteen-year-old, or might be symptomatic of a deeper rebellion. Something to monitor, particularly after they took up residence on Urse.
“Presumably that’s why I’m suddenly welcome at the Council table, too.”
The Vizier hesitated. “The Crown Prince Jacen specifically requested your presence.”
“Oh.” Rory snorted in a most un-princesslike fashion. “We can’t disappoint Jacen, can we? At what, his first meeting? His second?—And where will my mother be?”
The cold throbbed up through the Vizier’s bones. “I’m sure I don’t know, your Highness. She doesn’t keep me abreast of her schedule.”
Anymore, he thought. And this time he needed no translation to understand the look that passed between Rory and Grytt.
“Well,” said the Princess, after a moment. “That’s her loss, then. We’re glad to have you with us. Aren’t we, Grytt?”
Grytt arched her remaining eyebrow. “We are indeed,” she said, with no trace whatsoever of her customary irony.
The Vizier bowed, because that was proper; but he felt a little warmer, somewhere near the remnants of his heart, for the first time in months.
The Vizier had expected the Council meeting to be somewhat perfunctory, Grytt already having assembled a short list of personnel she wanted for Urse, and having already discussed those choices with him at some length. The elder pair of guards, Stary and Franko, had been the old King’s personal guard, and brought useful experience; the younger pair, both women and very junior, would provide Rory at least two people close to her own age.
It should have been a simple matter of securing the Minister of Defense’s signature on the transfer papers. And indeed, that part of the meeting went entirely as planned. But, as it happened, the Prince had his own ideas about the composition of his sister’s household.
“I think a eunuch would be the perfect bodyguard for you. No one wants to be killed by a eunuch. You’d be totally safe on Urse.”
The Crown Prince Jacen leaned back in the high-backed chair and stacked his boots on the table. In a taller individual, such a posture would communicate disdain and disrespect for those at the table with him, and for the Regent-Consort, his mother, who had expressly forbidden such behavior. But since Jacen was a weedy, unimpressive nine, the elevation of his feet effectively eclipsed his face, and left his audience—the Vizier, Princess Rory, and the Minister of Defense, at the moment, the others having been dismissed—staring at the soles of his boots.
“We could get you one.” Jacen’s feet waggled back and forth like scolding fingers. “Couldn’t we, General Foyle?”
The Minister of Defense had the grace to look uncomfortable. “The practice is illegal in the Consortium, Majesty.”
“Right, but it’s perfectly legal in the Free Worlds of Tadesh.”
Foyle winced. His gaze slunk sidelong until the Vizier noticed it. Then it crept away and settled on the table. “I don’t think it’s wise to entrust your sister’s safety to a Tadeshi bodyguard, your Majesty. That’s rather the point of this meeting. To ensure the Princess is guarded by our personnel, and to determine who that will be, which we have done, Majesty, to my satisfaction.”
“Yes, but—”
Rory shifted a little bit left, so that she could see Jacen’s face. She cut him off smoothly. “Thank you for your concern, Jacen, but I don’t need another bodyguard. I have Grytt.”
Two spots of red bloomed on Jacen’s cheeks. “Grytt’s only half of anything. Besides. Body-maids are for Kreshti. We aren’t Kreshti. We’re Consortium. And I don’t think our new father will want you keeping someone with mecha parts, especially after what happened with Ivar’s body-man, and especially not a Kreshti on top of all that. There are murmurs of sedition on Urse, you know, caused by Kreshti.”
It was an impressive string of logic, for the Prince. The Vizier suspected Deme Isabelle’s hand in the speech-writing. Sedition was a syllable or two beyond Jacen’s typical conversational muscle.
General Foyle was frowning, now. The Vizier knew him as a man of formidable intellect and precarious patience. Rory, in contrast, was displaying a remarkable forbearance. No hint of true feelings on her face. His training, that. The Vizier felt a gentle sunrise of pride stirring in his chest.
That satisfaction lasted exactly three heartbeats, at which point the Princess ran her hands down both arms, as if straightening her sleeves. In another person, that would be fidgeting, and Rory was certainly capable of that; but the Vizier had spent too many years around Grytt, and around Rory, to be fooled. Rory was checking weapons. That she was carrying them at all, in the Council chambers, in the Crown Prince’s presence—well, it was certainly illegal, even for another member of the royal house. It was also almost certainly at Grytt’s prompting. And because neither Grytt nor Rory believed in empty gestures, those illicit weapons were certainly not pins.
The Vizier did not honestly believe Rory would draw steel on her brother. That she seriously considered it, however, he did not doubt at all. And certain as he was of her beneficence, he felt a surge of relief when she gripped the ends of the arms of her chair and spoke.
“Moss is not, nor will ever be, our father.”
Jacen’s smirk grew wider. “But it’s his kingdom. It’s his station. And if he says you have to get rid of Grytt, then you do.”
Rory regarded Jacen for a long, quiet moment, until the Prince’s smirk faded and slipped sideways down his face. Then she pushed her chair back and stood up. Jacen jerked upright in his chair, scraping his boots across the table in his haste to get them back on the ground. Foyle startled in his chair, hands reaching for absent weapons. Someone, at least, followed protocol.
If Rory noticed the ripple of upset, she gave no sign. She nudged the table with her hip, just exactly far enough to catch the Prince still sitting. Jacen could only rise now by scooting his chair back, and the conspiracy of thick carpet, wheelless chair legs, and his own royal physique would render that effort conspicuous and undignified.
Rory stared down at her brother, past a nose and cheekbones that owed more to her Kreshti ancestry than the Thorne. Then she leaned over the table, bracing her hands flat. The long tail of her braid slipped off her shoulder and dangled. The Vizier fancied that he could see Jacen’s face reflected in the blue-black gloss.
“I will not replace Grytt to suit our mother’s husband. If he doesn’t like that, then he can refuse to let my shuttle dock, and I will be more than happy to turn around and come back home.”
“You can’t do that! Mother says—”
“Oh, now it’s Mother says. Mother’s said nothing about leaving Grytt behind. That’s your idea, which is why I’m ignoring it. You’re not King yet, little brother.”
“I will be, someday,” Jacen said. “Then you’ll have to do what I say.”
“We’ll see,” said Rory.
It was unclear to the Vizier whether she meant the conditional phrase to apply to her projected filial obedience or to Jacen’s eventual sovereignty. In any case, it proved academic.