Whole human religions are founded on the principle that the multiverse is, in whole or in parts, sentient, and interested in the well-being of its inhabitants. Sages and philosophers debate the soundness of those beliefs, and write elaborate treatises on their conclusions. Arithmancers and alchemists eschew all debate on the multiverse’s awareness or intention, and instead hold forth on its nature: regular, predictable, bound by rules. (Here we necessarily exclude the philosophies and religions of the various xenos—k’bal, vakari, tenju, alwar, mirri—as even a summary of their disparate faiths is beyond the scope of our work here, and whose opinions on multiversal sentience vary as widely as their biologies). Neither sages nor alchemists lay much stock in superstition, the definition of which includes whatever phenomena or conditions run counter to the popular theories of the day. Superstition, they say, is for the uneducated.
It is unclear precisely where fairies fall in those classifications, and perhaps it is they, and not the multiverse, responsible for subsequent events involving Rory and Jaed. Whatever the case, the unfolding of those events seems to indicate a particular sense of the absurd and ironic, which would indicate that, if the multiverse is itself sentient, it has a peculiar sense of humor.
Grytt typically returned from the detention center to the Thorne apartments at the first-shift supper hour, or a little later. She did this for two reasons. One, she found her presence unsettled the second shift security when they arrived to their posts and found her already waiting. And two, it allowed Rory ample time to prepare supper after completing her own self-imposed work day at the embassy. Rory had declared cooking to be relaxing and therapeutic, where most of the relaxation and therapy came from the swift violence of chopping and the sustained aggression of frying, boiling, and baking. Thorsdottir and Zhang had learned quickly that offers of help, while tolerated, were somewhat unwelcome, and that the Princess was best left alone in the kitchen, and approached only upon Grytt’s arrival.
Given the stress of the day, Thorsdottir expected the Princess to prepare something elaborate, involving a great deal of mincing and slicing, and the application of high heat. But upon her return from her walk with Jaed, the Princess planted herself at the turing and remained there, unmoving, looking uncannily like the Vizier had on the afternoon before his arrest.
Thorsdottir and Zhang had not actually seen the Vizier on that fateful day, but they both knew arithmancy at work when they saw it, and they surmised that Grytt would not be pleased to arrive home and discover the Princess engaged in dangerous activities from which her guards had not prevented her.
“Though if Grytt wants to stop her,” Thorsdottir muttered to her partner, “she’s welcome to try. I’m not that brave.”
Zhang, having exhausted the day’s conversational stores already, only nodded. She shared her partner’s concern. The Princess’s very public performance this afternoon had generated a great deal of traffic on the public networks, and at least two separate mentions on unrelated 2D broadcasts, including four minutes of amateur video of Rory and Jaed walking past the passenger terminal promenade and pausing at the porthole, while the program’s host commented with plastic intimacy about the significance of the romantic reconciliation after the tiff in the recreational facilities.
When it was clear that Rory was engrossed in whatever arithmantic mischief she’d found, Thorsdottir—whose mother had tried, very hard, to raise a respectable daughter—pushed back her sleeves and began assembling a soup out of the remnants of earlier meals and the last bits of unused ingredients. It was, she reasoned, likely (inevitable) that Grytt would return in a temper, and even more likely that she would (correctly, in Thorsdottir’s reckoning) blame Rory’s guards for failing to protect the Princess from her own impatience. What exactly they could have done, she and Zhang, to prevent Rory’s actions, Thorsdottir would not have been able to articulate; but it was her professional experience that no one ever did ask the bodyguards, and besides, royalty’s task was to govern kingdoms and consortiums, not itself.
So she was surprised when Grytt arrived and said, the split second the door had closed in her wake, “You realize that your little performance today has the turing net brimming with speculation about your affair with Jaed Moss?—Oh hell, tell me you’re not hexing that turing.”
Rory, absorbed in exactly that, did not answer.
Then, and only then, did Grytt round on Thorsdottir. “Tell me she’s not hexing that damn turing.”
The partners looked at each other.
“She is,” said Thorsdottir. “But she assured us it was safe.”
Grytt folded her arms and planted herself in front of Rory’s desk, so that she stared down past the turing’s screen and directly at the Princess’s face.
“Safe is the ground underfoot and a gun in the hand. Safe is not a damn turing in this place. Which you know, Rory Thorne.”
The Princess did not remove her eyes from whatever held their attention. But her mouth tightened, and she heaved out a sigh of excessive volume that one did not require a fairy gift to understand as I am busy, please shut up.
Thorsdottir made herself very busy with the soup, lest her stillness attract Grytt’s ire. Idle soldiers, in Thorsdottir’s experience, were always a target.
After the soup was well on its way to boiling, and Zhang had crowded into the narrow space to offer her own expertise (“I think maybe salt?”), and the pair of them had sprinkled and sniffed and stirred as much as they could—then, finally, Rory pushed her chair back from the desk, producing an unlovely squeal of metal on metal.
She looked up at Grytt, who had not moved, for a long unblinking and unsmiling moment.
“I do know,” she said. “And it is safe. And I am not having an affair with Jaed.”
“Since when does something need to be true to have everyone believing it?” Grytt shook her head. “I’ll bet your new friend is getting an earful tonight from his father. Maybe his brother, too.”
“Bah,” said Rory. “He’s not my new friend.”
“Not what it says on the network.”
Rory pulled the end of her braid around and examined it thoughtfully. She began to unravel the fastening, and, having done so, started to unweave the braid, combing the strands out between her fingers. Her voice climbed into a high, false innocence. “Since when does everyone saying a thing mean that it’s true?”
Thorsdottir had grown up on a farm that, among other things, kept sheep, which were a particular favorite of the local bear-cats. To protect the sheep, therefore, any farmer with wits kept several of the large, thick-furred dogs bred especially for that purpose. Those dogs, when confronted with a bear-cat, made a sound very much like Grytt was making now.
“Don’t you make a game out of this, Rory Thorne.”
Thorsdottir wondered if her duties as bodyguard included protecting Rory from Grytt. Zhang’s expression, when she checked, suggested that Zhang shared her worry.
The Princess herself appeared unconcerned. Rory flicked the half-undone braid aside and leaned forward onto her elbows. “No joke. No game. You’re the one who told me that the best plans don’t survive contact with the enemy.”
Grytt appeared to consider the classification of Jaed Moss as enemy. “You’re telling me you had a plan. Well. That’s something.”
“I’m telling you Jaed was hostile. Charming him—which was the plan—wouldn’t’ve worked.”
“And now?”
“Now he’s agreed to cooperate.”
Grytt chewed that information over, rolling it from cheek to cheek, flesh to metal, before swallowing it. “And that will explain why you’re hexing this turing?”
“I’m not,” said Rory. “At least, I haven’t yet. But I do have Jaed’s pass-string.”
“You have—” Grytt squinted through her flesh eye. The metal one, lacking an eyelid, whined in its socket. “We’re all going to end up neighbors to Rupert. You think his father doesn’t spy on him, too?”
Rory smiled with the minimum possible number of muscles necessary for the expression. “No. And neither does he. But he’d like to be . . . unspied upon. So I volunteered to look over his pass-string for hexes. Which I found, and removed.”
“And what do you get, in return for this labor?”
“Another pass-string. Preferably the Regent’s. Maybe one of his Ministers’.”
“Hm. He’s stealing for you, now?”
“He is.”
“Fascinating.”
“Not as fascinating as what I found out with only his set of clearances.”
Rory paused, for half a beat. Grytt raised her eyebrow. The princess added another pair of muscles to her smile.
“The royal apartment is not drawing sufficient power for any inhabitants, unless Ivar likes it dark. Nor is it drawing any water from the system. Therefore, the Crown Prince is no longer on Urse.”
“You found that out with Jaed’s pass-string.”
Rory inclined her head. “Resource consumption isn’t top-secret information. It’s just restricted to government ministers and certain mid-level employees, which happens to include the Regent and his sons. That’s . . .” She glanced at the screen. “Approximately two thousand people, give or take. Besides. It’s a simple hex to make my access just now, with Jaed’s string, look like the third-shift clerk in charge of tracking water consumption in the first through fifth levels. The significant information is that Ivar’s not here. Nor can I find any records of a shuttle—military or otherwise—departing for Beo.”
“If it was a royal shuttle, there may be no records.”
“I thought of that. But there is a regular supply run that goes from here to Beo. It’s dependent on celestial motion and local atmospheric conditions. The last supply run was cancelled because of the storms. Nothing has left Urse for Beo because nothing can land on Beo right now. Not supplies. Not Ivar. So where is he, Grytt?”
“How should I know? I can almost keep track of you.” Grytt side-eyed Thorsdottir. Then she crossed toward the portholes and glared out. Cherno had wandered out of sight, leaving only a carpet of stars and a great deal of unbreathable void to absorb Grytt’s scowl.
“I suppose whatever pass-string you get from Jaed will help you find out where Ivar is. Is that the plan?”
“That is the plan.”
“And then what?”
Rory shrugged. “Then we continue with the terms of our bargain.”
Thorsdottir braced her hands on the counter, prepared for the mother of all eruptions. She was surprised, therefore, when Grytt did not ask, and in fact only shrugged.
It was Grytt’s experience that diplomacy, which was a nice way of saying politics, was a lot like war, except the enemy could not be dispatched by a well-aimed bolt. Political methods, Grytt thought, were uglier and more damaging, particularly to the wielder; she would have spared Rory that experience a while longer, if she had been able, but necessity dictated otherwise. Grytt saw no point in fretting over it, or in asking questions the answer to which she might not like. She and Rupert had done their best with the girl. Best let her get on with it, and trust her to handle herself. She turned her attention to the kitchen, to Thorsdottir’s soup and the serving of supper. Soldier or politician, mecha or princess, everyone needed to eat, and she was hungry.
Had anyone inquired of the Vizier his opinion of the multiverse’s sense of humor before his incarceration, he would have waxed enthusiastic on the subject, citing multiple obscure texts and authors, and very likely enjoyed himself. Now, however, confined as he was in a detention block somewhere in the nether regions of Urse’s municipal complex, he found his opinion distilled to the more pragmatic there is no bad luck, only bad choices, which he’d read on a poster in a professor’s office once during his undergraduate studies. He had thought that notion absurd at the time. Now, he was less certain.
His choices had landed him here, after all, where here meant locked in a cell with a bunk, a sink and a toilet, and four blank, deliberately depressive bulkheads in dimensions just a shade too close to be comfortable. Through the single, small window in the door, he could observe another depressingly blank bulkhead across the corridor; over which lurked a single, obvious camera, a black globular eye that almost certainly had its twin in one over his door, and probably several less visible cousins besides. The cell had no ’caster, no terminals, no tablets. The guards had divested him of all personal belongings, including his robes, and given him a set of coveralls, just the wrong side of scratchy and the same color as his breakfast porridge.
So his choices, he thought, might require a little scrutiny.
In the first few days of his incarceration, the Vizier balanced his time between examining those choices and dreading the future. Rupert did not suppose Moss meant to torture him, exactly; there were statutes against that, to which every human collective, empire, kingdom, and corporation was signatory, and besides, torture didn’t work especially well unless the goal was to inflict suffering. While Rupert suspected Moss possessed the cruelty sufficient to order pain for its own sake, he did not think the Regent would be inclined to expend that effort just to hear someone scream.
No one came.
Rupert’s meals—the aforementioned porridge at what he thought must be first shift, and some twelve hours later, a sandwich of dubious origins, or a bowl of something edible with spoons (no knives or forks here)—arrived through a slot in the door (at the bottom, so that he must crouch to retrieve the tray, like a supplicant or a servant), and later departed the same way. He attempted once to crouch down and peer out the slot; he saw only a mecha’s chassis.
And still, no one came to see him. No one asked him any questions. No one arrived to present themselves as his solicitor. He might have, except for the meals, been entirely forgotten. Rupert could think of at least three statutes to which the Free Worlds of Tadesh were signatories that forbade solitary confinement of exactly this sort, except in the cases of pathogenic contagions or persons so dangerous that they could be classified as pathogens themselves.
Perhaps he should be flattered the Regent considered him such a danger. Instead, he felt unequal measures of self-pity, regret, and grim vindication. It had indeed been his choices that had landed him here. He could have accepted the offer for post-graduate studies in arithmancy instead of choosing the serve his Consortium, been a researcher instead of a diplomat. He might’ve managed to convince Samur to forego the alliance with Moss and to marry Rory to Larish instead, in which case the Consortium might have won the war with the Free Worlds (but, ugly but, Rory would be wedded to the Larish boy and travelling the void with the Larish fleet and he’d never see her again except by quantum-hex viewing ball). And of course he could have refused Rory’s request to hack the station turing, but then it would be her here in this cell, not him.
Grytt would have told him to quit whining, he thought. Grytt would have insisted he get off his sorry, narrow backside and do something. He wished she were here to tell him that, so that he could point at the blank bulkheads and the brazenly staring ’bot and demand of her how, exactly, he was supposed to do anything, should he beat things with his fists, like she would? And she would say—
The Vizier blinked. She would say, Do what you’re good at, Rupert.
So the Vizier attempted arithmancy.
It was a small hex, simple, meant only to discover if there were, in fact, other auras present in the corridor (guards) or the other four cells (other prisoners) or, as he was beginning to suspect, if it was only mecha and ’bots in the vicinity. But as he closed his eyes and slipped past that first aetheric layer, he encountered—not unexpectedly—a layer of counter-hexes, not only on the bulkheads, the door, and the deck, but also woven thick in the aether of the cell itself. He could see them plainly enough, like a minefield of equations that would alert someone if he attempted to bypass them. He tried a deeper layer, and another after that (and so on, until he knew he’d reached his limit) with the same result. Then he withdrew into his body and the first pressings of a headache. At least none of the hexes was actively attempting to breach his defenses, which was curious, and a bit of a relief, since he had not yet thought to put any into place.
So he did that next: laid a bulwark of hexes designed to deflect simple readings of auras, to conceal his own, to alert him if someone attempted to remove them. And then, no one having yet arrived to challenge him, Rupert made an attempt at the enemy hexes. First to brush them aside, and then, when that (predictably) failed, to counter them outright.
To his credit, he managed to disable one before the rest converged on him like a swarm of angry hornets. The subsequent shock-stings of counter-hexes startled him out of his usual composure, eliciting a yelp and a short, profane expletive. Then, breathing a bit faster now, and sure he had amused whoever was watching the ’bot feeds of his cell, he dabbed the blood off his nose, settled onto his bunk, and laid his palms on his crossed thighs. Surely now, someone would come, and the isolated waiting would end.
And still, no one came.
It was at this point that Rupert realized the solitude was the torture, and that he was in real trouble.
We will not linger on the details of the Vizier’s suffering endured in the subsequent days: how his mind, deprived of external stimulation, invented scenarios in which terrible things had befallen Rory, or—even worse, because they were even more impossible—scenarios in which he was rescued by Samur herself appearing at his cell door.
In truth, Rupert suspected that Samur did not even know what had happened. Moss controlled the station’s communications, and so could determine what information left Urse, and he almost certainly would not send Samur a message, nor allow Rory or the Thorne Embassy to do so (or intercept one if they did). A ship might carry the news, but it would have to be going toward Consortium territory, and Rupert knew that Urse was at least two tesser-hex gates from the Consortium border by the most direct route. And even if she did hear of his plight, what could Samur do? He had broken Tadeshi law. He might be subject to recall under treaty and diplomatic immunity, but he could just as easily be reported dead in custody, or in transit (and what if Moss had done so already?). He was also not sure Samur would invoke treaty on his behalf, not when he had been so careless. Except he had not been careless: the hex that had eluded him on the Ursan turing had been first-rate, the sort of thing he wished he could have encountered in an arithmantic trade journal, dissected and discussed in theory. He had been out-hexed, that was all. It happened. But the multiverse has never been conceived of by anyone, xeno or human, as forgiving.
As for other sorts of rescue, well. Grytt was too smart to use force on a station in which she and the guards were entirely outnumbered. He knew that Rory would continue to try to get him out by whatever means available to her. He did not hold out much hope that she would be able to do so. And so, given no alternative, he sat on his bunk and meditated in between fantasies of rescue and bouts of self-recrimination.
Then, finally, someone came. Rupert was unsure of the exact day or hour—he had no way to mark time’s passage except by meals, and he’d lost track of those—but he knew it was more than ten days, and less than, oh, twenty.
He had only a few moments between the pneumatic hiss of the door’s mechanisms and its subsequent opening to prepare. His mind leapt first to the certainty that it would be guards and that his time for interrogation had finally arrived. His heart, spurred by grim anticipation, galloped around the confines of his chest. He stood up, under some half-formed instinct that it was better to meet one’s fate upright.
The door opened. A single individual stepped through the open gap neatly, quickly, and the door whisked closed so quickly that the gust of its passing disturbed the otherwise pristine drape of his tunic. His clothing was typical stationer, unremarkable in its style, though its superior tailoring marked the wearer as rather well-off. He bore no obvious weapons.
An assassin, thought Rupert, and on the heels of that, how dramatic, followed by a conviction that the multiverse might possess, if not a sense of humor, at least a sense of the absurd. But then a hex attempted to breach Rupert’s own hedge of defenses. It was tiny and innocuous, intended to probe and map defenses rather than to breach them. After a few frustrated moments of finding no gaps in Rupert’s defenses, the hex withdrew.
It was then that Rupert concluded the multiverse had a genuine sense of humor after all. The attacking hex had be so stealthy and well-designed that, had Rupert been beset by distractions (such as, oh, anything else), he would have overlooked it completely. But because he had noticed it, he had also noticed its basic structural similarity to the hex in the turing which he’d overlooked and which had resulted in his current predicament.
Rupert gazed at his visitor with new interest. He was a smallish man, trim and tidy, possessed of a thin mustache and an even thinner pair of lips. Thoroughly unremarkable, if one were to pass him in the corridors. Rupert wondered idly if he had done so, and simply failed—again—to identify the threat. One’s attention just slid off the man. Or would have, if there had been anyone or anything else in the cell to look at.
Like hex, like arithmancer.
Rupert’s voice rasped from so many days of disuse. He hoped his wits were not similarly disposed. “I must congratulate you. It was an excellent hex, the one in the turing. I almost did not see it at all. Was it your creation?”
The arithmancer (whose name was Ashtet-Sun, which he did not share with Rupert but which we shall reveal here to give us something to call him besides the arithmancer) gazed at Rupert with a combination of irritation and incredulity. “Yes.”
“Then you are here to gloat, perhaps? Well. You have earned it. I am not sure how you managed to divide the sum of the first two variables without—”
“I am not here to discuss hex-string theory with you.”
“A pity, since that is the only thing I am prepared to discuss with you.”
Ashtet-Sun regarded Rupert through narrowed eyes. “I told the Regent that this wasn’t the right approach to take with you. This cell. Solitary confinement. I said it would make you defiant.”
In that, you are wrong, thought Rupert. The solitude had been well on its way to cracking him. Ashtet-Sun’s appearance now was an unintended boon for his sanity, but it also bespoke, well, something else, which he might turn to his advantage. Impatience, perhaps. Curiosity. Something that brought the Regent’s arithmancer here, deep in second shift, without armed escort, and if it was not vanity—
Ashtet-Sun hissed through his teeth. Impatience, then. Rupert felt another sally against his hexes, another attempt to read his aura, which his defenses repelled. He waited for his visitor to attempt to break his hexes down with force. That attempt did not come. Instead, the other man shifted unhappily from one foot to the other, as if the deck beneath his soles were growing warm.
“My countermeasures remain intact. So how are you getting past them?”
Rupert raised his eyebrows. “I assure you, I have no idea what you are talking about. I understand that response is cliché and expected in these circumstances. Nonetheless, it is true.”
The reader may here be suspecting—correctly—the correlation of Ashtet-Sun’s arrival with the discovery that someone using Jaed’s pass-string was rooting around in the turing. Ashtet-Sun was certain that someone was not Jaed, since Jaed was not the sort to take an interest in water consumption in the Prince’s apartments. Rupert harbored no suspicions of Jaed, but he was certain that whatever had alarmed Ashtet-Sun, it was Rory’s doing, and the very idea filled him with dread. This man was a skilled arithmancer, and Rory was not his equal. She was going to get herself caught—
Rupert gave himself a mental shake. Whatever Rory was about, she was succeeding so far. His visitor appeared to be in a state of some agitation, asking vague and unformed questions the way a man might if he was thinking aloud. He was also alone, without guards. That begged asking why, but Rupert already knew the answer. His work as Vizier had taught him the reading of people, with or without the corroboration of an aura or a convenient Kreshti fern.
“You’re afraid.”
Ashtet-Sun stared at him. “Why would I be?” he asked in a brittle voice that said that Rupert had gotten it exactly right.
“Because if it is not me responsible for whatever is happening, then you don’t know who it is.”
“Of course it’s you. You and that body-maid, somehow.”
“You mean Grytt? I haven’t seen her. You know that.” Rupert gestured at the bulkhead, the deck, the overhead, the presumed surveillance ’bots. “Besides. She is no arithmancer.”
“She doesn’t need to be. All that hexwork on her prosthetics.” Ashtet-Sun’s fingers flicked vaguely at his face and head. “She could be transmitting something. Or receiving it. Or hexed to explode.”
The Vizier began to suspect how the assassination of two kings on Thorne had been managed via the body-man, and perhaps by whom. It took every scrap of skill and experience to keep his face and voice diplomatically bland. “You made no error with the hexwork in this cell, and you’ve missed no secret transmissions. You may assure the Regent that I am secure and that, whatever prompted you to come here, I am not responsible for it.”
Ashtet-Sun stared at him, two parts withering, one part anxious, and pressed his thin lips to bloodless invisibility.
Rupert felt a small surge of hope. “The Regent doesn’t know you’re here, does he? He doesn’t know about whatever it is that has you so disturbed. And you don’t want to tell him. You’re afraid of what he’ll say. Or of what he’ll do?”
Ashtet-Sun did not bother with a response. He simply turned on his heel and departed, which was eloquent confirmation enough.
The Vizier stared for a full minute at the closed door. Then, when he was certain the ’bot would be recording again, he began to laugh: not the raggedy gasps of a man halfway to breaking, which he had been half an hour before, but deeply satisfied chuckles which were out of place in solitary confinement, and which Rupert hoped would spark unease in his captors. (Which they did. The guards observing him were in fact so disturbed that they filed a report, flagged for the Regent’s immediate attention, the delivery of which spoiled Moss’s dinner.)
Then the Vizier returned to his meditation, only this time, it was interrupted by imagining what it was Rory was doing, and taking pride, and hope, from that.
Ashtet-Sun was a careful man, bordering on paranoid. He performed a second, third, and fourth extensive review of his hexes in Rupert’s cell, none of which revealed any weakness or possible way that the Vizier could have wormed his arithmantic way through them. Perhaps that reassured Ashtet-Sun, or perhaps it further inflamed his paranoia and dread of the Regent’s displeasure. Regardless, it is not recorded that he ever reported his visit with the Vizier to Regent Moss, nor alerted Moss to his suspicions.
There are two things we might conclude from this encounter. First, that skill with arithmancy is in no way connected to good judgment; whatever the Vizier’s errors in overlooking Ashtet-Sun’s clever hex in the turing, Ashtet-Sun committed a much greater error in visiting the Vizier. For although Rupert gained no physical advantage from the visit, nor any new information, he did acquire hope, and that sustained him through the long, lonely days that followed.
The second is that the multiverse does have a sense of humor after all.