'Good thing he's on our side,' said David. 'If he is. If any of them can be. Why is Naroshi coming in?'
'I asked him to,' said Charles. 'Maggie is going to send the maps on to Rhui.'
'Is she going to take them down herself?'
'No. Marco wants to go back downside.'
'You're letting him?'
'We need more survey. Tess needs more intelligence, especially in Rhui's other hemisphere. He'll transfer over the maps to her and then head east, as far as he can go.'
'Until he comes around back to the other side? Wait. Does this have something to do with Diana Brooke-Holt and the sudden appearance of her interdicted jaran husband on Meroe Transfer Station?'
'What do you think?' asked Suzanne sourly. 'I told him he was being a fool.'
'Which comment,' said Charles dryly, 'he appreciated greatly. In part to do with her, yes, but mostly to do with Marco. He'll be circling that globe for the rest of his life, because he's too damn restless to settle in any one place, and he always has to be testing himself.'
'And seeing how close he can come to getting himself killed, without ever quite managing it.' Suzanne snorted and wiped her hands together briskly, brushing them off.
'I wash my hands of trying to improve him and his miserable life.'
Charles and David burst out laughing together, and Suzanne set her hands on her hips, glared at them, and then stalked out of the room. It wasn't a particularly effective exit, if only because it took so long for her to cross the tiled floor that the drama of her affronted expression had long since expired by the time she reached the far door. When she glanced back at them, David saw that she was smiling.
'Only twenty-seven apprentices? That's not very many,' David said to Charles.
'David, I have three yachts in my private fleet, which are allowed to ferry on the shipping lanes between human regions and Paladia Minor and Major. Each one is manned by a crew of twenty-four, more or less. Of these twenty-four, two of each crew, the captain and the purser, are allowed to disembark at either port. As well, Tess's old friend Sojourner and her husband Rene are in residence on the Keinaba flagship. And I have one human representative who sits as my shadow in the Hall of the Nobles, in the outermost circle of the emperor's palace, just as all the other dukes have such shadow markers- well, only theirs are Chapalii, of course. Then again, that one representative changes every three months so the poor soul doesn't go stark raving mad.'
Charles walked over to the field that separated the inside air from the outside air and set his hands, palms out and open, against it, and regarded the luxuriant growth within the greenhouse. David could not tell whether he was a nobleman surveying his domain, or a prisoner staring out from his cell.
'That's it. That is the entire sum of the human presence within Imperial space. Twenty-seven apprentices is a big jump, compared to that. I don't want to move too fast.'
He peeled his hands away from the field and sniffed, dabbing at his nose with a handkerchief. 'My hay fever is acting up again. I don't know how it carries from there into the main building.'
David chuckled. 'That's the thing about weeds. No matter how hard you try, you can never get rid of them.'
Charles grinned. 'It's good to have you back, David. I hope this time you'll stay longer. Oh. Hell. Let's go.'
David had deduced one thing about the Chapalii. They loved grandeur. They loved huge, towering spaces and masses of intricate and floridly-overwhelming decoration. So Charles had built a new reception room, a small, intimate reception chamber set into one of the corner towers and furnished to his own taste.
It was David's favorite room in the entire palace.
Two walls were windows, opening out onto a balcony that looked out over the tule flats and the far green glint of the greenhouse wing. David sat on one of the two sofas while Charles went to the bureau and rummaged for drinks.
'Canadian or Martian?' Charles asked, setting out two bottles of whiskey.
'Three of those pieces are new,' said David, nodding toward the white wall above the bureau, where Charles displayed his favorite art. He stood up and walked diagonally across the room, skirting the cartograph-lectern, to the opposite corner and stared at the full suit of lamellar armor that stood out on the balcony. The lacquered leather strips and polished iron segments gleamed in the long light of the setting sun. 'This is new, too. That's jaran armor.'
'Yes, it is.' Charles handed him his whiskey.
Suzanne came in. 'He's here.'
Charles walked back to sit down on the other sofa, so that he could look both out the window and at the plain teak double doors that opened into the room. David remained where he was.
Suzanne opened both doors, and Tai-en Naroshi entered, followed by one of his ubiquitous stewards. The duke held a crystal wand in his right hand.
'Tai-en,' said Charles.
'Tai-en,' said Naroshi.
The room itself was pale, lit by the two walls of windows and by the two white walls and by the furniture, all of it a light teak. Even the accents, the throw rug and the linen cushions on the sofas, were white. Even so, Naroshi's skin was paler still.
He examined the room, and Charles allowed him silence in which to do so. He paced slowly along the wall against which the bureau stood, looking at each piece of art in turn: the tapestry of birds; the woven doormat of green and red stripes; a saber sheathed in a gold case studded with pearls and emeralds; a silk robe embroidered with the lion and the moon of the Habakar royal house; the embossed bronze teapot and the enameled vase set on the bureau; a painting of Jeds, seen from the harbor, which was in fact the only piece of art along the wall. The other things functioned, on Rhui, as utilitarian objects, however beautiful they might appear displayed here.
Naroshi circled back, paused beside the tilted podium which was Charles's cartographer's table, and crossed the room to sit on the other sofa. Suzanne and the steward stood silently on either side of the open doors.
'I received your summons,' Naroshi said. He placed the wand carefully across both knees.
'I am distressed, Tai-en,' said Charles, 'by these charges which the Protocol Office has brought against members of my house,'
'It would sadden the emperor, indeed,' replied Naroshi, 'to have this matter brought to his attention. If only I could be assured that such a transgression had not occurred.'
Which it had, of course. David glanced at Suzanne, but she was watching the two dukes.
Charles placed a hand on each knee, echoing the placement of Naroshi's hands. 'My people would never have gone down to Rhui of their own volition because they know the strength of the interdiction, and, indeed, the only reason they would ever have been forced to go down there would be because another house, other Chapalii under another lord, had violated the interdiction and thus forced these, my own people, to investigate.'
Naroshi's pallor did not alter. But David waited, breathless, to see how he would respond. It was a classic gambit, of course: I know you sent your people down; yes, but I know you sent your people down.
'I am certain,' said Naroshi finally, 'that it would take considerable provocation for any lord to break an interdiction approved by the emperor himself. I must be mistaken. I will inform the Protocol Office that they must erase all charges on their list.'
'We are agreed, then,' said Charles. Now they knew exactly where each of them stood-more or less. Did Naroshi know that Tess was still alive? Did he guess? Did he know that Tess had transferred to her brother the cylinder from the Mushai's banks? Did Naroshi have such a copy himself? David hid a cough behind his hand. He decided that less had the advantage over more.
'But that is not the only reason I requested your presence here, Tai-en,' added Charles.
Naroshi lifted his chin, acknowledging the comment. 'I am honored beyond measure that you would allow my sister to design the mausoleum for your departed heir. I have brought her design with me, for you to view.'
'You are generous, Tai-en. May I hope that we can view it now?'
The two sofas sat perpendicular to each other, one with its back to a windowed wall, one with its back to the bookshelves that lined the rest of the wall out from the doors. Up from the rug that lay between them, an edifice rose.
David caught a gasp back in his throat. It was a clever insult. Or perhaps not an insult at all, but a tacit acknowledgment of their shared crime. It was the palace of Morava, clearly, in its essential design, but twisted and
