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Please note that both you and your witnesses must sign and seal the third, fifth, and sixth pages. If you do not have the required number of witnesses, please stop by our offices during normal business hours, and we will be happy to provide some.
Moira flipped through the stack of rich, heavy parchment and saw the indicated lines and the helpful little penciled circles to show where the seals were supposed to be affixed. Everything seemed perfectly clear, as her attorney had promised it would be. All she needed were a few seals and signatures, and she would be Miss Moira Jean Darrow again, and no longer Countess Moira Lepida Faustina.
She stood and walked to the window of her little office, looking out over the straits through the drizzle. The office wasn’t much to speak of, but it had an incredible view. First the palace grounds, then the mansions of the patricians, sleek and gray in the rain, and the shops and marketplaces, and finally the big warehouses of the docks. Out in the harbor and the straits themselves, nearly lost in the fog, hundreds of ships rode at anchor or sailed back and forth—fishing boats and big, hulking merchantmen and long, low, sleek naval galleys.
The only reason she worked here, in this office, the local headquarters of her Prefecturate of Correspondence and Communications, was her relationship with Faustinus. Or at least that was how it had started.
She loved the work. No matter what, she would still keep her job as Prefect. Nothing could possibly induce her to give that up. And she enjoyed working with Faustinus, even now. The divorce, like their previous break-ups, was entirely amicable. As she told herself frequently, the only thing that upset her about the whole business was the sad realization that marriage had been such a stupid blunder.
When she had simply been his mistress, they could both come and go as they pleased. And when their respective jobs had kept them apart for months, they could agree to see other people for a while, with no insult intended, and with the clear understanding that neither would be averse to resuming the affair in the future.
But marriage had made it official. Marriage had tied them together, like drowning sailors tangled in sinking wreckage, and it had been a terrible, terrible mistake, even if they were still friends in the aftermath. She didn’t blame him. She didn’t even blame herself, really. But she did wish they had thought the whole business through more carefully before they had done it.
“Did you finish with this, yet, ma’am?”
Moira kept staring out the window, but she knew the voice of Lily Serrana, her Vice-Tribune, second-in-command, and all-purpose secretary. Lily clearly meant the divorce papers.
A slight pause, and then, with a tiny sigh, “Ah, not yet, then. I’ll put this away. Gina’s here with the morning messages.”
Moira turned now, and Lily gave her an all-too-knowing look with her big blue eyes. She gave no sign of a rebuke, but Moira knew Lily was thinking it.
They went together into the cramped outer office, where Gina waited. A tiny girl, only a little over five feet tall, she had curly hair that had turned into a wild, tangled mass with the rain and humidity. As usual, Gina bubbled with enthusiasm, and she couldn’t contain her bright, dimpled smile as she dropped into an overly formal bow.
“Good morning, ma’am!” She shot out a gloved hand from under her dripping cloak and proudly held up a sealed leather packet of letters.
Moira looked at the packet, and then she tilted her head slightly, taking in the girl’s cloak. Made from dark green, good quality leather, it had brass buttons up the sides and some subtle light green embroidery around the hood. The only sign of wear was a small stain near the waist.
It was a very nice cloak, and with a shock, Moira recognized it. That stain had come from a spilled glass of Turetanian red in Aballum, right after she and Faustinus had caught that Tribune skimming money from the Proconsul.
The cloak was hers. She had bought it seven or eight years ago, but she had never liked it very much. She had only ever worn it three or four times. The weather in Presidium rarely got cold enough to require such a thick and heavy cloak. But she still remembered buying it, and she remembered distinctly where she had left it: in the wardrobe of Faustinus’s official chambers here at the palace. In case it ever started raining or snowing while she was in town.
She took in a jagged little breath and stepped back.
“Are you alright, ma’am?” asked Gina.
Lily took Gina’s packet of messages and set it aside. “It’s the change of seasons, no doubt,” she said. “Always makes me feel a little under the weather, too. Shall I get you some wine, ma’am?”
“Yes, please,” said Moira.
Maybe Faustinus had found the cloak and given it to the girl, entirely innocently, because he knew Moira didn’t want it back, and he didn’t want it cluttering up his wardrobe anymore. But there was another explanation, a much simpler explanation: Gina had gotten dressed in Faustinus’s room that morning.
“Well, fuck. That didn’t take him very long,” Moira thought bitterly.
But she had to admit this was unfair. He had been much more willing to try to make the marriage work than she had been. And she couldn’t, in fairness, expect him to stay celibate while they dissolved the union.
And if he wanted a simple, happy diversion, he could hardly have done better than little Gina. The girl was a professional acrobat by training, and she was irrepressibly upbeat and optimistic. And this in spite of the fact that her life had been shockingly tragic and sad before Moira had recruited her to be one of the elite Emissariae of her Prefecturate.
The girl’s parents—acrobats themselves—had died when she was 4, and she had grown up hungry and desperate, flitting from one theatrical troupe to another. Like many in her profession, she had discovered that theaters and troupes lost interest in her when she grew up, and she had been reduced to selling herself on the docks before Lily and Moira had found her. And yet, the girl remained the most energetically cheerful person Moira had ever met.
“After me,” she thought, “he must want someone bright and sunny, with no complications.”
Lily, with that uncanny sixth sense of hers, knew precisely what to do. “I think we need something warmer,” she said, turning to Gina. “Why don’t we go down to Alcaldus’s, get a jug of mulled wine, and bring it back here?”
Gina clapped her hands and bounced up on the balls of her feet, declaring mulled wine the perfect thing for a day like this. Then the two women left Moira alone with her thoughts.
She cried for a while. It was the first time she had cried at all since she and her husband had agreed to divorce. She didn’t cry for the marriage—that had been a stupid, drunken mistake. She cried, instead, for the loss of her younger, more innocent and cheerful self, who had honestly thought that getting married to Lord Servius Lepidus Faustinus, Legate Emeritus and Court Sorcerer to the Emperor of the Immani, was a good idea. Perhaps she had never been quite so naïve as little Gina, but she had been so much younger then, when she had left Myrcia and come to the Empire.
Not in a literal sense, of course. She had been 88 when she had helped her lover overthrow the vile Emperor Lucius. But she and Faustinus were both hillichmagnars—gifted with magy and unnaturally long lives. And she had led a very sheltered existence for most of her first nine decades. Now she was 105, and though she barely looked a day older than when she had first come across the straits and landed at the docks in armor, she felt as if two or three lifetimes had passed.
She managed to stop crying and wash the tear-streaks from her face before Lily and Gina returned.
“Here we are,” said Lily, with a prim little smile, as she poured the steaming hot beverage into three earthenware cups. “Just what we all need.”
Good old Lily. “Prima et Optima,” as Moira occasionally called her. The first and best. When Moira, Faustinus, and Empress Vita had dreamed up the office that later became the Prefecturate of Correspondence and Communications, Lily had been the very first girl Moira had recruited as an Emissaria, or secret messenger. And of that original group of four girls, Lily, at the age of 31, was the only one still on the job. Granted, she served as deputy commander now, and she rarely went out on missions anymore. But she provided a reassuring presence by Moira’s side here in Presidium, or up north in Albus Magnus, or wherever the Imperial court happened to be.
Lily had warned Moira not to get married to Faustinus. “There are some people who are meant to spend a lifetime together,” she had said, very drunkenly, the night before the ceremony. “But you two aren’t among them.”
In spite of her misgivings, Lily had served as Moira’s first witness at the wedding. And now she would get to be first witness again, whenever Moira got around to signing those documents her attorneys had sent her. Lily, like the other eight full-time Emissariae, knew about the divorce, but she had never said, “I told you so,” and for that, Moira felt very grateful.
Moira finished her mulled wine in a few, scalding gulps, and then, with her depression smothered now under a comforting blanket of alcohol, she felt equal to reviewing the day’s messages. She picked up the sealed pouch and went into her office. After closing the door, she opened the pouch and started reading.
Most of it was the usual stuff. Senator so-and-so having an affair with such-and-such’s daughter. Legate whatshisname suddenly riding around in a new gilded carriage, though nobody knew where he’d gotten the money for it. Somebody’s wife getting a bit too friendly at a party with the Minertian ambassador. And so on and so on. All of it would be filed away, and notes would be made in code in various ledgers in color-coded ink, according to the system Moira and Lily had invented. And then, perhaps, five or six years from now, Faustinus or Moira would be able to corner someone late at night and say, “This isn’t a threat, but if you don’t want everyone to know about what you did, you might want to do what I say.”
It was sordid, it was nasty, but Moira never really cared about the morality of it. Many of the people named in these reports were the sort of people who had never liked her—the people who had treated her as an outsider, even though she held an appointment as an Imperial Prefect.
Lily knocked again and looked in, her own drink still in her hand. “One more thing, ma’am. Gina has a personal report to make.”
“Oh?” Moira wished she had a whole bottle of the mulled wine to herself. “Fine. Show her in.”
Gina bounced into the room, still wearing Moira’s old cloak and smiling like she didn’t have a care in the world. No, that wasn’t quite it—she smiled like she couldn’t understand how anyone, ever, might have cares.
“Ma’am, there’s something I have to tell you,” she said, almost breathless in her enthusiasm.
“Oh, Finster’s balls,” thought Moira, cringing. “This isn’t how she’s going to confess that she’s fucking my husband, is it?” Aloud, she said, “Go ahead.”
“You know I’ve been working on building contacts with the Myrcian refugees, right?”
“Right,” said Moira.
This was something she and Lily had told the girl to do, since Gina had learned many languages, including Myrcian, during her years of itinerant circus work. With her bubbly air, the girl might give the impression of a friendly, if not terribly bright kitten. But she had a pretty decent mind under that mass of frizzy dark curls. No doubt that was another thing that would have recommended her to Faustinus.
But no matter. This was official business, and Moira was determined to remain professional, in spite of the disasters of her personal life.
“Ma’am, there have been some odd...rumors. The Gramiren supporters say the dead king’s heir—Broderick II, I suppose he would be, or ‘The King Over the Mountains,’ as they call him, is sending out envoys.”
“What sort of envoys?” Moira took out a piece of scratch parchment and started taking notes. Myrcia was more than the land of her own birth. It was a major ally of the Empire, and the outcome of the current civil wars in the old Trahernian kingdom was of immense importance to Moira’s employer, the Immani Emperor Tullius.
She barely even paused to consider the fact that the dead Gramiren king’s heir was Brodrick Jr., a nice enough boy she had met years ago during the same mission on which she had first fallen in love with Faustinus.
Gina scrunched up her face. “Ma’am, it’s very odd, but...they say he’s sending out...priests.” Then the girl, careful as always with language, corrected herself. “Preosts, as they say. And monks and nuns, too.”
Moira nodded. This sounded very wise, especially if the envoys were going to the Empire, where almost no sect or cult was so odd as to violate the fundamental and longstanding Imperial policy of religious toleration. If the Gramirens, currently the losing side in Myrcia’s civil wars, wanted to send secret agents to Presidium, there was no better cover than that of a cleric or monk.
“Well done,” Moira said. “Keep looking into this. And if you find out anything, report it to me.” She paused, digging her fingernails into her palm under the desk. “Or report it to Legate Faustinus. Either of us will be fine.”
If the girl had heard the hesitation, or seen the way Moira’s face flushed, she didn’t show it. “Oh, yes, ma’am. I know you and the Legate compare notes all the time.”