corridor tiles towards Oramen and Fanthile as they reached the final turn in the stairs. Fanthile stopped when he saw the creatures. Oramen thought better of not doing likewise. He heard the palace secretary sigh.
“Oramen-man, Prince,” Ambassador Kiu-to-Pourl said. Its voice was that of dry leaves rustling, or a small fire starting in tinder. “That who gave that you might be given unto life is no more, as our ancestors, the blessed Involucra, who are no more, to us are. Grief is to be experienced, thereto related emotions, and much. I am unable to share, being. Nevertheless. And forbearance I commend unto you. One assumes. Likely, too, assumption takes place. Fruitions. Energy transfers, like inheritance, and so we share. You; we. As though in the way of pressure, in subtle conduits we do not map well.”
Oramen stared at the thing, wondering what he was supposed to make of this apparent nonsense. In his experience the ambassador’s tangential utterances could be made to represent some sort of twisted sense if you thought about them long enough — preferably after writing them down — but he didn’t really have the time just now.
“Thank you for your kind words,” he blurted, nodding and backing towards the stairs.
The ambassador drew back a fraction, leaving a tiny pool of moisture glistening on the tiles. “Keep you. Go to that which you go to. Take that which I would give you. Knowing of alike-ness. Oct — Inheritors — descend from Veil, inherit. You, inherit. Also, is pity.”
“With your leave, sir,” Fanthile said to the ambassador, then he and Oramen bowed, turned and went clattering down the last flight of stairs towards ground level.
The fuss in the mounting yard mostly involved a whole blaring coven of dukes, earls and knights disputing loudly over who ought to ride with the Prince Regent on the short journey he was about to make to meet the body of the returning king.
Oramen hung back in the shadows, arms folded, waiting for his mount to be brought before him. He stepped backwards into a pile of dung near the yard’s tall rear wall and tutted, shaking some of the shit from his boot and attempting to scrape off the rest on the wall. The dung pile was still steaming. He wondered if you could tell what sort of animal had left the turd from its appearance and consistency. Probably, he imagined.
He looked straight up at the sky. There, still visible over the lanterns illuminating the mounting yard from the ensquaring walls, a dull red line marked the cooling course incised by the Rollstar Pentrl, many hours set and many days away from returning. He looked to the nearpole, where Domity would rise next, but this was a relatively long night, and even the Rollstar’s forelight was still some hours away. He thought he could see just a suggestion of the Keande-yiine Tower, stretching into the darkness above — the lower extent of the Xiliskine, though nearer, was hidden by a tall tower of the palace — but he was not sure. Xiliskine. Or 213tower52. That was the name their mentors, the Oct, would give it. He supposed he ought to prefer Xiliskine.
He returned his attention to the yard. So many nobles. He’d assumed they’d all be out fighting the Deldeyn. But then, his father had long since drawn a firm distinction between those nobles who brought grace and emollience to a court and those who were capable of successfully fighting a modern war. The levied troops, magnificently motley, led by their lords, still had their place, but the New Army was part full-time professional and part well- trained people’s militias, all of it commanded by captains, majors, colonels and generals, not knights, lords, earls and dukes. He spotted some senior priests and a few parliamentarians in the mixture too, pressing their suit for inclusion. He had fondly imagined riding out alone, or with one or two attendants. Instead it looked like he would be leading out a small army of his own.
Oramen had been advised not to have anything to do with the battle taking place out over the plains that day, and anyway had no real interest in it, given that they had all been most severely assured it was quite certain to go their way by Werreber, one of his father’s most forbidding generals, just the night before. It was a pity, in a way. Only a couple of years ago he’d have been fascinated with the machinery of war and all the careful dispositioning of forces involved. The intense numericality of its planning and the extreme functionality of its cruel workings would have consumed him.
Somehow, though, since then he’d lost interest in things martial. They seemed, even as they were in the process of securing it, profoundly inimical to the modern age they’d help usher in. War itself was becoming old- fashioned and outmoded. Inefficient, wasteful, fundamentally destructive, it would have no part in the glitteringly pragmatic future the greatest minds of the kingdom foresaw.
Only people like his father would mourn such a passing. He would celebrate it.
“My prince,” murmured a voice beside him.
Oramen turned. “Tove!” he said, clapping the other young man on the back. Tove Lomma had been his best friend almost since nursery. He was an army officer nowadays and wore the uniform of the old Flying Corps. “You’re here! I thought you’d be fighting! How good to see you!”
“They’ve had me in one of the lyge towers the last few days, with a squadron of the beasts. Light guns. In case there was an aerial attack. Listen.” He put one hand on Oramen’s arm. “This is so bad about your father and Ferbin. The stars would weep, Oramen. I can’t tell you. All the men of the flight… Well, we want you to know we’re at your command.”
“Rather, at Loesp’s.”
“He is your champion in this, Oramen. He’ll serve you well, I’m sure.”
“As am I.”
“Your father, though; our dear king, our every—” Tove’s voice broke. He shook his head and looked away, biting his lip and sniffing hard.
Oramen felt he had to comfort his old friend. “Well, he died happy, I imagine,” he said. “In battle, and victorious, as he’d have wished. As we’d all have wished. Anyway.” He took a quick look round the melee in the yard. The contesting nobles seemed to be gathering themselves into some sort of order but there was still no sign of his charger. He’d have been quicker in the steam car after all. “It is a shock,” he continued. Tove was still looking away. “I shall miss him. Miss him… well, terribly. Obviously.” Tove looked back at him. Oramen smiled broadly and blinked quickly. “Truth be told, I think I’m like a half-stunned beast, still walking around, but eyes crossed as wits. I fully expect to wake up at any moment. I’d do so now, if it was in my power.”
When Tove looked back, his eyes were bright. “I’ve heard that when the troops learned their beloved king was dead, they fell upon their captives and killed every one.”
“I hope not,” Oramen said. “That was not my father’s policy.”
“They killed him, Oramen! Those beasts! I wish I’d been there too, to take my own revenge.”
“Well, neither of us were. We must hope what’s been done in our name brings only honour.”
Tove nodded slowly, clutching Oramen’s arm once more. “You must be strong, Oramen,” he said.
Oramen gazed at his old friend. Strong, indeed. This was quite the most vapid thing Tove had ever said to him. Death obviously had an odd effect on people.
“So,” Tove said, with a sly, tentative smile, “do we call you sire or majesty or something yet?”
“Not yet…” Oramen began, then was led away by an earl and assisted to his mount by dukes.
On the Xilisk road, near the small town of Evingreath, the cortege bearing the body of King Nerieth Hausk back to his capital met with the barely smaller procession led by the prince Oramen. Immediately he saw the Prince Regent, lit by hissing travel lanterns and the slow-increasing forelight of the Rollstar Domity, still some hours from its dawn, Mertis tyl Loesp, who all the world knew had been like a third hand to the King for almost all his life, dismounted and, pulling himself with heavy steps to the prince’s charger, went down on one knee on the muddied road, head bowed, so that his silvery hair — spiked and wild from the tearings of grief — and his distraught face — still dark with powder smoke and streaked by hot, unceasing tears — were level with the stirruped foot of the prince. Then he raised his head and said these words:
“Sir, our beloved master, the King, who was your father and my friend, and was friend and father to all his people, comes back to his throne in triumph, but also in death. Our victory has been great, and complete, and our gain and new advantage immeasurable. Only our loss exceeds such vast accomplishment, but it does so by a ratio beyond calculation. Beside that hateful cost, for all its furious glory, our triumph these last hours now looks like nothing. Your father was full occasion for both; one would not have been but for his matchless leadership and steady purpose, the other was invoked by his untimely, unwanted, undeserved death.
“And so, it is fallen to me, and is my great, if ever-unlooked-for privilege, to rule for the short interval
