Matter

whole under a sea of fluttering banners, complete with wildly caparisoned warbeasts and a host of captured Deldeyn soldiery, artillery pieces, military vehicles and war engines. Streets had been widened, buildings knocked down and rivers and gullies covered over to provide a thoroughfare long and wide enough to accommodate the great procession.

Tyl Loesp had ridden at the head, Werreber and his generals a little behind. In the Parade Field where the kilometres-long procession had ended up, the regent had announced a year without tax (this later turned out to mean a short-year without certain mostly rather obscure taxes), an amnesty for minor criminals, the disbandment of various ancillary regiments with the release — with pensions — of nearly one hundred thousand men, and an extended mission to the Ninth that would mean that both he and the Prince Regent would spend significant time in Rasselle and the Deldeyn provinces, bringing the benefits of Sarl rule and wisdom to that reduced but highly fruitful and promising land.

Oramen, sitting in the shade of the flag-fluttering parade stand with the rest of the nobility, had been warned of this last provision only an hour before, and so was able not to look surprised.

He had felt an initial burst of fury that he had been simply told this rather than consulted, or even asked, but that had gone quickly. He’d soon started to wonder if such a move, such a break with Pourl might not be a good idea. All the same, to be so instructed…

“You might refuse to go, sir,” Fanthile pointed out.

Oramen turned away from the view over the city. “I might, in theory, I suppose,” he said.

“That’s the bath ready, sir! Oh, hello, Mr Palace Secretary sir!” Neguste called, marching into the room behind them.

“Thank you, Neguste,” Oramen said, and his servant winked and retreated.

Fanthile nodded at the note in Oramen’s hand. “Does this make the decision for you, sir?”

“I had already decided I might go,” Oramen said. He smiled. “The very idea of the Hyeng-zhar fascinates me, Fanthile.” He laughed. “It would be something to control all that power, in any sense!”

Fanthile refused to be impressed. “May I speak bluntly, sir?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Tyl Loesp might worry that leaving you here while he tightens his grip on Rasselle would allow you to build too independent a foundation of regard amongst the nobles, the people and even parliament here. Removing you to somewhere so out of the way, however impressive that place might be as an attraction, could appear to some almost like a form of exile. You could refuse to go, sir. You’d be within your rights. By some arguments your place is here, amongst the people who might love you all the better with greater acquaintance. I have heard who will be there around you. This General Foise, for one; he is entirely tyl Loesp’s man. They all are. All his men, I mean. They are loyal to him rather than to Sarl or your father’s memory, or you.”

Oramen felt relieved. He’d been expecting a scolding or something equally disagreeable. “That is your bluntest, dear Fanthile?” he asked, smiling.

“It is as I see things, sir.”

“Well, tyl Loesp may arrange me as he sees fit, for the moment. I’ll play along. Let him have his time. These men you mention may see their loyalty as lying with him, but as long as he is loyal in turn, which he most unquestionably is, then there’s neither difference nor harm. I shall be king in due course and — even allowing for all our New Age talk of parliamentary oversight — I’ll have my time then.”

“That gentleman might grow used to arranging things to his liking. He may wish to extend his time.”

“Perhaps so, but once I am king, his choices become limited, don’t you think?”

Fanthile frowned. “I certainly know I’d like to think that, sir. Whether I can in honest conscience allow myself to hold such a view’s another thing.” He nodded at the note which Oramen still held. “I think the fellow may be forcing your actions in this, sir, and I believe he may come to enjoy the habit of doing so, if he does not already.”

Oramen took a deep breath. The air smelled so good and fresh up here. Unlike the depths of the city, where, annoyingly, so much of the fun was to be found. He let the air out of his lungs. “Oh, let tyl Loesp enjoy his triumph, Fanthile. He’s continued my father’s purpose as he himself might have wished, and I’d be a churl — and look one, too, in the eyes of your precious people — if I tantrummed now while I am still, in so many eyes, an untried youth.” He smiled encouragingly at the troubled-looking face of the older man. “I’ll bend with tyl Loesp’s current while it’s at its strongest; it might be bruising not to. I’ll beat against its ebb when I see fit.” He waved the letter Fanthile had given him. “I’ll go, Fanthile. I think I need to. But I thank you for all your help and advice.” He handed the note back to the palace secretary. “Now, old friend, I really must go to my bath.”

“Open your eyes, prince,” Fanthile said, for a moment — astoundingly! — not standing aside to let the Prince Regent past. “I do not know what ill’s been done about us since your father’s death, sir, but there’s a smell that hangs over too much that’s happened. We need all take care not to be infected by its noxiousness; it might prove each one of us all too mortal.” He waited another moment, as though to see whether this had sunk in, then nodded a bow and, head still lowered, stood to one side.

Oramen didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t embarrass the fellow further following such an outburst, so he just walked past him on his way to his toilet.

A week later he was on his way to the Hyeng-zhar.

What with all the preparations and general fuss caused by the move, he hadn’t seen Fanthile again before leaving Pourl. The morning of the day he was due to go, shortly after he’d heard he was to have his very own personal guard of two stalwart knights, he’d received a note from Fanthile asking to see him, but there hadn’t been time.

* * *

Jerle Batra took the signal during a break in the peace negotiations. These were proving protracted. He wasn’t directly involved in the haggling, of course — it boggled one to think what the indigents would make of a cross between a talking bush and an expanding fence — but he was overseeing while some of the others in the mission did their best to keep people focused. In the end it had to be the natives themselves who made this work, but a bit of judicious prodding helped on occasion.

He rose a couple of kilometres into the air from the marquee in the middle of the great tent city on the grassy swell of plain where the negotiations were taking place. Up here the air smelled fresh and clean. It felt deliciously cool, too. You experienced changes in temperature so quickly in this form; you felt the wind blow through you. There was nothing quite like it.

My dear old friend, he communicated. The signal was passing from and to the excursion platform Quonber, currently almost directly overhead but on the fringes of space. To what, etc.?

Jerle Ruule Batra, said a familiar voice. Good-day.

The It’s My Party And I’ll Sing If I Want To was an Escarpment-class GCU which had been strongly associated with Special Circumstances for nearly as long as Jerle Batra himself. Batra had no idea where the ship actually was in a true, physical sense, but the old craft had gone to the trouble of sending a working-scale personality construct to talk to him here on Prasadal. This implied a matter of more than passing importance.

To you too, he sent, wherever.

Thank you. How goes your peace conference?

Slowly. Having exhausted the possibilities of every other form of mass-murder they could possibly employ against each other, the natives now appear intent on boring each other to death. They may finally have discovered their true calling.

Still, cause for optimism. My congratulations to all. And I’m told you have a child!

I most certainly do not have a child. I am looking after a child for a colleague. That is all.

Nevertheless, that is more than one might have expected of you.

She asked. I could hardly refuse.

How interesting. However, to business.