TK stood up and made his way around the conference table to the Art Nouveau side table with the appearance of a shrine. He returned with the silver-framed photograph, which he handed to Donald. The photograph was of a young couple in front of a low wall of sandbags behind which was a backdrop of pale canvas that was probably the interior of a tent. The young woman was dashingly beautiful, with dawn-red hair flowing over her shoulders and dark, slate-blue eyes all the more striking for her pale complexion. Donald was struck by her likeness to Sarah-Kelly Newman—they shared the same determined set of mouth—although this young woman was more delicately featured. She wore trousers to accompany her double-breasted suit.
“That was my younger sister, Victorina.”
Donald had never heard of any younger sister, which meant this young woman was either long dead or else banished. He therefore replied with delicacy.
“She was a very fine-looking young lady.”
“She was indeed.”
“Who was her beau?”
The young man was certainly an impressive fellow, tall and broad shouldered with an impressive dome of cranium. His eyes were thin and at least sceptical, if not downright scathing, an effect hardened by the flat, compressed mouth.
“His name is Prentice Nightminster. He’s still around, somewhere, although you won’t meet him. I heard he became a businessman of some sort after dropping out of Oxford University. A clever man, it must be said. Clever and mysterious.”
Donald knew he was being taught a lesson, what he could not fathom was the nature of the lesson.
“What is the message in this photograph, Your Decency?”
“That picture was taken on the evening of May Day 2073. A few hours later, a rabble of scum murdered Victorina in the Sack of Oxford.”
“Oh good God! That’s appallingly tragic.”
“Yes, it was. It tore open my heart. Don’t ask me to show compassion for radicals, Donald, because I won’t.”
“You need not be concerned about my loyalties. Politics is a hobby for those who can afford it or else the posture of those with nothing to lose.”
“Good.” TK stood up and took the photograph back to its place amongst the dark purple hellebore. When he returned, Donald asked:
“So our world is perfect?”
TK snorted and shook his head decisively.
“Not a chance! There are grotesque abuses for sure, but there never was a society without its foul underbelly. Yes, we discharge surplus to the public drains. But look at the Public Era, which in all sincerity considered itself the height of history. Millions died in crashes on the public highways, the banks sucked interest like lampreys, millions were killed in wars to protect oil for the Fatted Masses. If you like, we can go through every stage of human society and I will show you the foulness beneath. In time you’ll learn that balanced land maximises the health of our native stock and indeed, that of the whole world.”
Donald did not try to argue—it was too likely his anger would show. He resolved to start reading economics—and to attend the National Party conference on the 30th. It was a bloody dangerous resolution for one just granted high honour by His Decency. A commoner made privy to the heart of sovereign privacy would get no shrift should there arise doubts about his reliability. He would walk in the footsteps of Pezzini, wherever they led.
So why take such a risk?
Years of court work had taught Donald there was no more dangerous distraction than emotion, just as he knew resentment was one of the worst. It distorted perception of reality. But one had to consider the matter of self-respect—he had to meet his face in the mirror every morning.
Becoming aware he had drifted into himself, he lifted his head to find TK was watching him. TK’s eyes seemed to have cooled, and he spoke as if he had been mulling things over too.
“I’ve just had a thought,” he said. “With Pezzini gone there’s a stack of demographic calculations to be done. They’re not exactly difficult, the challenge is the vast amount of fiddly detail which makes them notoriously tricky to get right. It will give you an excellent overview of the economic structure of the Lands of Krossington.”
“That will be fascinating, Your Decency.”
Chapter 8
His Decency Tom Krossington spent the morning perusing radical leaflets gathered by his marines working undercover in the industrial asylums around London.
In other circumstances, it would have amused him to learn what the National Party’s radicals believed about the private lives of the sovereign caste. Apparently the Krossingtons lived in a white palace inlaid with gold—this description was accompanied by a poorly-reproduced image of an exotic building that TK recognised as the Taj Mahal of India. Another leaflet, written by one claiming to be a servant of the Krossingtons who had escaped, described drunken orgies in which brothers ravished sisters on beds of mashed peaches whilst out of their minds on opium. Natives who failed to achieve their quota of acres ploughed were skewered on stakes and left to rot after the habit of Vlad the Impaler. TK was reassured by reports from his spies in the asylums who stated few slummies took such claims seriously.
Neither radicals nor slummies would have believed the truth about the fabled Castle Krossington, that “vile lair of the most spiteful, arrogant clan”. It was not some immense and diamond-studded Versailles of the South Downs. There had been a settlement at the location of Castle Krossington since Roman times. By the end of the Public Era, it had grown into a country village not far from the Wey and Arun Navigation, bang on the border of Surrey and Sussex. As Castle Krossington, it remained that country village, situated a convenient ten miles east of Haslemere, the capital of the Lands of Krossington. The big changes lay in the surrounding woods, which had grown back across the flat-bottomed valley around the old canal. These woods hid barracks, armouries and garages for the Krossington marines. Beyond these safety features, the gravel lanes became a maze
