Lord Chen, wearing the wine-red coat of a convocate, walked among the purple lu-doi blossoms in his courtyard. The spring day was unseasonably hot and sultry, and he felt prickles of sweat beneath his collar.
Around him on all four sides loomed the tall Nayanid-style gables of the Chen Palace, the center of the power, money, privilege, and duty that had surrounded Maurice Chen from the hour of his birth. A tangible reminder of his status, his importance, and his position within the empire.
Gravel crunched beneath his mirror-polished shoes. The beige stone of the palace glowed in the bright sun. Birds called from overhead. The heavy, sweet scent of the flowers oppressed him.
He rehearsed his arguments in his head. Then he rehearsed them again.
Lord Chen approached a bronze statue of a maiden wearing an elaborate, formal gown of a fashion that had gone out of style a millennium ago. Near the statue was an old Lai-own servant with a tray, laying out the refreshments Chen had ordered: a pot of tea with two cups, alongside a dish of muffins, pastries, and sweets.
Suddenly Chen felt the need for something stronger.
“Bring me mig brandy,” he said.
The Lai-own bowed, his feathery hair waving in the spring air. “Do you wish me to bring the bottle, my lord?”
Lord Chen fought impatience. Did the creature think he’d be swigging a whole bottle of brandy in his garden, in the middle of the afternoon?
“Bring it to me in a glass.”
“Right away, my lord.”
The servant brought him the drink on a salver, and Lord Chen tossed it off in a single gulp. A pleasing fire coursed its way down his gullet. He returned the glass to the salver and looked up to see his daughter, Terza, approaching from amid the blossoms.
Terza seemed to float over the path in an air of unhurried tranquility. On the sunny, sultry day she wore a lacy white summer dress that contrasted with the long black river of hair that fell past her shoulders. Her expression was serene without being insipid, her almond eyes acute without being intrusive.
Besides which, she was quite frankly beautiful. Because, Lord Chen thought, she was a Chen—the product of millennia of breeding, of education, of taste, now gliding toward him through the palace garden of her ancestors.
She looked at the glass he’d placed on the salver. “It is a hard day?” she asked.
Not yet, he thought. But he gestured with one hand in an equivocal way. “Not worth discussing,” he said. “You weren’t at the Ministry today?”
Terza held a post in the Ministry of Right and Dominion, the civilian bureaucracy that served the Fleet. If she’d come from work, she’d have worn the brown tunic of a civil servant.
“I did some work from home,” she said. She was not only a high-ranking official but a high-ranking Peer, and there was little pressure to spend time in the office.
The servant drew a chair back from the small table and offered it to Terza, and she thanked him and seated herself. Then the Lai-own helped Chen to his seat.
“I have tea,” he said. “Unless you’d prefer something stronger.”
“Tea would be lovely.”
The servant poured. A rich, smoky odor filled the air, the scent of the first cutting from the family tea plantation in the To-bai-to Highlands. Terza opened a napkin, and the fine linen wafted over her lap.
“Thank you, Tarn-na,” Chen said, and the servant ambled back into the house.
“How is Mother?” Terza asked.
“I’ve heard no complaints from Sandama,” Chen said, “so I suppose she’s doing well.”
She cocked her head and looked at him. “Are you lonely?”
He was, actually, and had been for years, ever since his wife had left Zanshaa rather than live with the family tragedy. But he smiled and took her hand. “Not as long as you’re here.”
Terza smiled and squeezed his hand. “And you have grandchildren to keep you young.”
The grandchildren, he thought. Who are part of the problem. But he smiled again.
“Yes. And I have the affairs of the clan to keep me busy,” he said. “I had a meeting with the directors just this morning.”
She withdrew her hand and took a cup of tea. “Good news?”
“Better than good,” Chen said. “Our businesses are reaping record profits. Particularly shipping.”
She nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
“We are completely free of debt and obligation. We own the ships outright, and we own much of the cargo. We—”
He was interrupted by blaring music, trumpets of some sort, that floated over the Nayanid gables. He looked up and scowled.
“What’s that?” Terza asked, as the fanfare was joined by what sounded like kettledrums.
“Cosgrove the financier,” Chen said. “Our new neighbor. His children and their friends have some kind of . . . brass band . . . and they rehearse at every hour of the day.”
Cymbals crashed. Birds rose alarmed into the sky.
“Oh, they are unspeakable,” Chen continued. “They throw enormous parties that disturb the entire neighborhood. The other night they all spilled out into the street and began a game of zephyrball, outside and in the middle of the night. We were lucky any of our windows survived.”
The music came to a clattering, stuttering halt. Then started all over again, more discordant, but with even more enthusiasm.
“It might be different if they could actually play,” Chen said.
“Is this the Cosgrove from Hy-Oso?” Terza asked. “Shipping and finance?”
“And gold. He’s got some kind of corner on those gold-bearing seaweeds they have there.” He grimaced. “They’re new. Like so many of the people I see in Zanshaa these days.”
Terza took a bite of pastry, dabbed with her napkin at the corner of her mouth.
“The war made some people rich,” she said delicately.
“All the wrong people, if you ask me.”
She smiled. “You were just telling me how wealthy we are.”
“We didn’t profit from the war,” Chen said. “We almost lost everything. But with the years of peace, we’ve finally worked our way out from under.”
From under your in-laws, he thought.
From their earliest days in the Hone Reach, the Chen family had always been strong in shipping, but the outbreak of the Naxid War had been a disaster. A significant number of Chen ships had found themselves in parts of the empire controlled by the Naxid rebels and had been confiscated by the enemy. Loyalist ships had wiped out many of these in raids, and the Naxid rebels had used the survivors so hard that they all needed refitting. Others were cut off in remote areas where they could only sit in dock and await the end of the war.
Other Chen assets had been similarly compromised. Clan Chen had been facing ruin, until Lord Roland Martinez had approached him with a business arrangement. The Martinez clan would rent all his cargo ships, even the ones cut off or in enemy hands, for a period of five years. In return, Lord Roland expected Chen to steer military contracts his way, favors that Lord Chen—a member of the Fleet Control Board—was in a good position to grant.
Lord Chen had no problem shifting government business toward his financial savior. Trading favors was a long-established element of the system by which the Convocation, the Peers, and the empire itself functioned. Clan Martinez was ridiculously rich even by Chen standards, and they were useful allies. All had worked out well for Chen until Lord Roland turned up at the Chen Palace one morning with a demand—Roland Martinez wanted his daughter.
Not for himself, but for his younger brother, Gareth. Who was, admittedly, a clever man and a hero of the war, but who was still a Martinez. A provincial Peer from the distant world of Laredo, with a ghastly backwater accent that all the training in the world had not polished from his palate.
Laredo had not been settled—had not even been discovered—when the Chen Palace first rose in Zanshaa’s High City. What right had this clan of arrivistes to demand a Chen—and not only a Chen, but the Chen heir?
In vain Lord Chen argued against the match. Terza barely knew Lord Gareth Martinez, he explained. She had only recently lost her fiancé in battle, her mourning period should be respected. The war had unsettled everything, perhaps they could discuss the young couple’s future after the peace . . .
But Roland had beaten him down with the simplest of arguments: Clan Chen would take Gareth Martinez, or Clan Chen could go down to ruin.
And so Lord Chen had given—had sold—his daughter. His wife had been so mortified by the match that she’d left Zanshaa permanently and now traveled aimlessly from one world to the next, visiting old friends and relations and spending months at a time at spas and exclusive resorts. Spending Chen’s money, or, as if adding insult to injury, sometimes the money that Clan Martinez had loaned him.
Terza, still wearing in her hair the white mourning threads for her lost fiancé, Lord Richard Li, had taken the news of her fate with a calm resolution that bespoke her breeding, and she submitted herself to the tragic marriage that must have cut short all her hopes. Lord Chen had never so admired his daughter as at that moment.
Chen had submitted to Roland’s demands, but he had no intention of remaining under Roland’s thumb forever. Once Clan Chen was on its feet, it would have no need of Lord Roland, Gareth Martinez, or any other member of their parvenu breed.
It had taken longer than expected for Lord Chen to free himself from Roland’s clutches. The agreement over the ships expired after five years, leaving Chen with a profit, but Chen still needed to replace what was lost during the war, and that required more borrowing. Only now, with strong profits in shipping and his other enterprises, had Lord Chen been able to pay off the last of the loans.
Lord Roland had been surprised that he’d wanted to pay them off at all. He hadn’t been pressing for reimbursement. And when Lord Chen had made the last repayment, Lord Roland had made a point of telling him that if he ever ran short, he could call upon Martinez funds at any time.
I will no longer be your puppet, Lord Chen had thought. And Terza will no longer be your prize.
“Yes,” Chen said. “We’ve repaired all the damage done by the war. The economy is booming. And . . . we are no longer under obligation to anybody.”
Terza sipped her tea. “I’m very pleased,” she said.
“To anybody,” Chen repeated. “And of course—” Again he sought her hand. “You are no longer obliged to anyone.”
A slight frown crossed her perfect, serene brow. “Financially, you mean?”
“In any way.”
“I have children. I imagine I’m obliged to them.”
“Yes. That’s true.” Lord Chen began to sense that his point was beginning to be lost in digression. He let go of Terza’s hand, reached for his teacup, and tried to compose his thoughts. He decided to opt for confession.
“I’ve always been uneasy,” he said, “over the way your marriage was arranged.”
There was a flicker of intensity in Terza’s dark eyes, a flicker there and then gone, to be replaced by her usual tranquil gaze.
“It was war,” she said. “There was no time for the usual formalities.”
“There is time now.”
A crooked smile quirked the corner of her mouth. “It’s a little late for a betrothal party, don’t you think?”
“No,” said Lord Chen. “No, it’s not.” He said the last word with, he thought, too much emphasis.
Composing himself, he said, “You should consider yourself free to choose the life you wish. You’re still young, and we aren’t obliged to anyone, not any longer.”
Terza said nothing, only frowned into her teacup. Lord Chen decided to view this as encouragement, and he went on.
“Gareth Martinez is a worthy fellow,” he said. “Brilliant in his sphere, I’ll grant you that. But in your sphere—our sphere—his limitations must be obvious.” He tugged at his collar and found it damp with sweat. “As Lady Chen, you’ll have a brilliant future ahead of you. You’ll be a member of the Convocation, you’ll be among the highest in the land. I can see you chairing one of the important committees, or becoming governor of someplace important, like Seizho or even Zanshaa itself.”
Lord Chen raised his palms. “How can Gareth help you in any of this? And what can he do that is meaningful while you are rising? He’d just be someone attached to you, with nothing to do. It would drive him mad, an active man like that.”
A look of deep concentration settled onto Terza’s face. She spoke slowly, as if each word had taken a great deal of thought.
“You wish me to preserve my husband’s sanity . . . by divorcing him?”
Chen sighed. “There are many more suitable men in the High City—surely you realize that?”
“He’s the father of my children. He’s the father of my—of our—heir.”
“You’re young,” Chen insisted. “You can have more children with another man. A man with whom you could be an equal.”
And who will provide you with another heir, he thought. An heir with more suitable ancestors.
Trumpets and kettledrums sounded in the air. Lord Chen glanced in the direction of the Cosgrove Palace and snarled. Then he turned back to Terza.
“Our bloodlines are immaculate,” he said. “We go back almost to the beginning of human history.”
“You mean almost to the conquest of Earth.”
Chen flapped an impatient hand. “There was no history before that, just barbarian tribes slaughtering each other.” He leaned toward his daughter. “Once there was a reason for your marriage to Gareth Martinez. I wish only to say that the reason no longer exists, and you should be free to attach yourself to a man with ancestry as illustrious as your own, and a future as brilliant as yours can be.”
Terza placed her cup in her saucer, and her saucer on the table. The look of concentration had faded, and her face now bore its usual serenity. A smile touched her lips.
“I’m perfectly happy in my marriage, Father.”
“But surely you can see—”
“You say I should be free,” she said. “I am free, and I choose freely. I choose Gareth.”
Lord Chen felt his heart sink. “But, Terza,” he said, “you can do so much better.”
“I think I have done very well.” She removed the napkin from her lap. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I should go home. Gareth is highly favored in the Vandrith race, and it will be broadcast live tonight, and the children are very excited. I should make sure they have their tea, otherwise they’ll be too keyed up to eat.”
“But, Terza . . .” It was all Lord Chen could do to keep from wailing in despair. That accent! he thought. I’ll have to listen to that dreadful accent for the rest of my life.
“Thank you for your concern,” Terza said. “I know that you want the best for me, but I assure you that the best has already happened.”
She bent to kiss his cheek and drifted away, a pale erect figure amid the lu-doi blossoms, the tranquility of her slow, measured walk immune to the provocations of the brass band next door.
Lord Chen leaned back in his chair and looked at his cooling tea in its porcelain cup. He looked at the walls of the Chen Palace around him, and he imagined their ancient halls sullied for centuries by Martinez accents, by Martinez brats. He turned and signaled for Tarn-na, who was waiting in silence on the other side of the glass doors that led to the pantry.
“Another brandy,” he said. Loss and despair seemed to howl in his soul like a cold north wind around the eaves of his palace.
“This time,” he added, “you may as well bring the bottle.”