A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (59 page)

Ahasz crossed his arms, and watched Ormuz as he paced back and forth, keeping a boat-squad of marines between himself and the missing wall which gave onto the Imperial Household District.

Inspector Finesz crossed to the young man, put a hand to his arm and bent to speak into his ear. Ormuz glanced across at the door sharply, then nodded, and turned away. He crossed his arms and stared moodily at His Imperial Majesty Willim IX.

The Involute and the Admiral re-entered the room. She crossed to the desk to stand beside Ahasz. He rose to his feet and turned about so that, like her, he faced the Emperor.

“Father,” she said, “you will vacate the Throne. You will step down in my favour. Hubret is no longer heir.”

“Flavia!” burst out Ormuz.

“Quiet, Casimir!” she snapped.

“You gave an oath,” he insisted mulishly.

She gestured brusquely. “The situation has changed. There is urgency now.” She did not remove her gaze from the Emperor. “Step down, father. The Imperial Throne is mine.”

The Emperor seemed to deflate. He sank into his chair as if his bones had turned liquid. Putting a hand to his cheek, he stared imploringly at the Admiral. “Flavia… But
why
?”

“Because we need a strong empire and we need a strong hand at its helm.” She jerked her head to indicate the study’s missing wall. “I have an army out there, father, and a fleet above. They are loyal to me—to me personally. Step down, father, or I unleash them.”

Ahasz barked a laugh, greatly amused at history repeating itself. Almost thirteen hundred years ago Admiral Edkar umar Ribuan had built himself a fleet that was personally loyal to himself during the War with the Baal. He had taken that fleet to the Old Empire’s capital world, Geneza, and seized the Summer Throne.

And now the Admiral—Imperial Princess Flavia umar Shutan—had done just the same.

The Involute had gone. The Admiral’s demand to her father, to vacate the Imperial Throne in her favour, left the room silent and shocked. The Emperor—ex-emperor—sat at his desk, defeated, a man in the grip of historical forces he could not understand. The anger he’d directed at Ahasz for the destruction of the Palace had gone, and now he gazed sorrowfully down at the polished wood of his desk-top.

Inspector Finesz sank onto a chair in a corner of the study, oblivious to the dust covering its cushion and now staining her OPI uniform. Although he did not know her well, Ahasz suspected the tight-lipped smile she wore signified amusement.

The Admiral’s marines, and their commander, stepped out into the corridor. Ahasz could hear shouts from deeper in the Palace, as her army rooted out the defenders and persuaded them the siege had finally been lifted. There would, the duke suspected, be many new medals minted in the coming weeks. And perhaps even a few patents of nobility drawn up.

He watched his clone cross to the Admiral and sidled closer to overhear their conversation. Neither seemed to notice him. So strange to see his clone in the flesh. Like meeting a younger self. But not quite—the boy’s upbringing had made a different man of him. It only remained to be seen if it had made a better man of him. Not so accomplished, of course: Ahasz had been educated and trained by the best. But a more
moral
man, perhaps.

“What did he say?” demanded Ormuz of the Admiral.

They stood close and spoke quietly, but Ahasz could hear every word.

“Nothing that need concern you,” the Admiral replied.

“You’re taking the Throne! Of course it concerns me.” Ormuz laid a hand on the Admiral’s arm.

Ahasz almost laughed. They were lovers? So Finesz had been telling the truth. She had spurned him but could not resist his clone. It was, in a fashion, the ultimate betrayal.

“Do not get above yourself,” the Admiral said. “I have been persuaded by the rightness of this.”

“By an
Involute
? They
created
me, Flavia. They set this whole thing up!”

“You cannot know that.”

Oh but she could, thought Ahasz. Everything had been orchestrated. He and the Admiral had used the knights sinisters as their go-betweens when planning this conspiracy and counter-conspiracy. Not all of it had been foreseen, however: Ormuz’s survival and subsequent involvement, or Ahasz’s own failure to take the Imperial Throne.

And certainly not this desperate grab for the prize by the Admiral.

Ahasz was beginning to wonder if the Involutes had played him for a fool. He’d duped his sister, Mayna, and he’d suffer for that later. But the Admiral? Had she too been in bed with the Involutes, manipulating Ahasz as they had done?

“Why, Flavia?” Ormuz insisted. He chopped the air angrily. “Why?”

“Because a strong Throne is needed. My father is weak.”

“
Why
do we need a strong Throne?”

Ahasz smiled. Would she tell him?

“It is none of your concern.”

No.

“I think it is. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me!”

Ahasz remembered when he’d had that much passion. A pity it was wasted.

“You forget yourself,” hissed the Admiral. She leaned closer to Ormuz. “You are nothing but a copy of
him
.” She threw out an arm to point at Ahasz. “I chose to follow you because the timing suited me and…” Her expression softened and she did not complete her explanation. After a moment of silence, she continued, her voice colder than before: “You were useful to me. That place you visited, the nomosphere. I could not refuse that gift.”

Oh she was so cold. Ahasz had forgotten that, how she could make the temperature of a room plummet when she wished to. Ormuz clearly had no experience of it. He stepped back from her in horror.

“Is that all I meant to you?” he said, so quietly the duke barely heard him.

The Admiral did not reply.

Ahasz glanced across at Finesz, but she was gazing idly at the spines of the surviving books on the shelf beside her.

“Do not question me.” The Admiral crossed her arms tightly across her bosom.

Ahasz knew her well enough to realise she was hurting—at
something
—but Ormuz plainly did not.

The young man stared at her in silence for a minute or so. The duke watched the emotions at war on his face. He felt some small anger at the thought of Ormuz in the Admiral’s bed, of him occupying the place in her heart that was by rights his own. But to see the young man’s ideals so crudely dismissed, the young man’s emotions trampled upon, moved the duke to pity. Her years in the wilderness had hardened her yet further. She would do well on the Imperial Throne.

“If you’re wrong, Flavia, I
will
question you,” Ormuz said.

“It must be done.”

“Tell your father you were mistaken.
Help
him, there’s no need to overthrow him.”

“There
is
need, Casimir.” She looked away from him. “I have made my decision, I will not change it.”

“But it’s wrong!”

She turned back to him. “It is no longer your concern,” she spat. “You have served your part. I will hear no more from you, or must I have you arrested for arrogation?”

Ormuz stared at the Admiral, shocked. The Admiral’s will was not something lightly overcome, as Ahasz knew himself to his cost. Nor was the word “wrong” in her vocabulary.

Abruptly, Ormuz unbuckled his belt and dropped his sword at the Admiral’s feet. He turned on his heel and stormed across the room. At the doorway, he turned and looked back. From his expression, he plainly wanted the Admiral to change her mind, to apologise and call him back to her side; but she would not meet his gaze. Disgusted, he stepped out into the corridor.

Ahasz watched his clone leave with mixed feelings. He would have been dangerous, and Ahasz could understand why the Admiral had pushed him from her. Yet, having Ormuz close to her would have felt, in part, as though he were himself at her side.

No matter. The parts they had all played may have been rewritten during this final scene but the end result remained the same.

The duke crossed to Finesz and looked down at her.

She must have sensed his presence. Still gazing at the book-shelves, she said: “Look at the books they have here. Some of them must be worth a fortune. And I’ll bet not one of them has been read.”

“Who would read them?” replied Ahasz, amused. “Willim?”

She looked at him. “I thought he was supposed to be a scholar of some sort.”

“Oh, he is. The worst kind of scholar: a narrow focus and an ignorance of everything outside it.”

“What’s his subject of study?”

“The reign of Emperor Mikul the Mad.”

“Oh.” Finesz looked away. She scanned the room and frowned. “Where’s Casimir?”

“He left. Flavia—the Admiral—and he had a falling out.”

The inspector rose to her feet. “I should go after him…”

Ahasz gestured dismissively. “Let him go. He’ll be back.”

“Perhaps not. He has principles, you know.” She looked down at herself. “Dear Lords, look at me.” She began to slap one-handedly at her legs and hips to remove the dust she’d picked up from the chair. With each impact of her palm, a small white cloud exploded from the black cloth of her uniform.

“You seem remarkably unconcerned at Flavia’s seizure of the Throne,” Ahasz remarked.

Finesz looked up at him from her bent-over posture. “And we went to war to prevent you doing just that. Ironic, isn’t it?” She straightened, grimaced at her hand, which was now pale with dust, and then wiped it several times with her other palm. “Quite frankly, your grace, I’ve given up. As far as I can tell, all this squabbling has had very little effect on anyone outside the Household District. At least the Admiral is actually in the line of succession. And —” She leaned in close and adopted a conspiratorial whisper— “I’ve met Prince Hubret and he’s, well… I think many won’t be upset he’s been passed over for the Throne.”

“In other words, a coup among the Imperial Family is acceptable.”

“Ah. No. Not when you put it like that. I mean, there
are
laws governing this sort of thing.”

Ahasz gave a low laugh. “This could be your chance, Sliva, to be a real law-maker. You have unprecedented access to the new Empress.”

She shook her head. “Not me. Not when it’s my boss himself who’s pulling the Admiral’s strings. I want to get as far away from here as possible. Some nice quiet bureau on a world where absolutely nothing happens. Yes, that’ll suit me perfectly.”

T
he train shook and rattled its way along the elevated track. Ormuz sat twisted to face forward, his elbow on the back of the seat, his chin cupped in his hand, and stared out of the window at the tenements below. He noted the narrow dirty streets, the ramshackle roofs, the occasional bursts of greenery in window-boxes and planters. And the people thronging the streets.

After leaving the Admiral in her father’s study, Ormuz had made his way back down to the trench in Palace Road. He had stood there outside the blasted Palace, still not believing what had just happened. To be discarded so easily. To have been lied to all this time. He had loved the Admiral but he had clearly meant nothing to her. He lokoed back over his shoulder—it was not just the Imperial Palace which lay in ruins.

Feeling numb—although his side still pained him from the wound Ahasz had inflicted—he made his way to the Roundabout and the railway station beneath it. They were shipping out the casualties, of both sides, on the trains. He stepped aboard one such carriage. Someone gave him a wet cloth and he used it on his jacket to remove the worst of the mud and blood decorating. And, accompanied by the moans and screams of the dying and injured, he had rode the rattling train into Toshi.

And now, several trains later, each one chosen simply because it was there, he found himself here in this narrow carriage. Battered wooden seats, against the carriage walls, facing each other across a central aisle, polished by generations of travellers’ rears. Although mostly empty, a smell of packed bodies still lingered in the air, left behind during the last rush hour.

Turning away from the window, Ormuz surprised a couple of proles staring in his direction. No, he should not think of them as proles. He was the same now: a proletarian. Owned. His bond held by… He tried to remember the name of yeoman who had owned
Divine Providence
. The Order of the Left Hand had actually owned the data-freighter, but some distant yeoman had purportedly held the crew’s bond. As he tried to recall the name, he realised what had prompted the looks from the other passengers.

He wasn’t wearing an escutcheon.

His clothes might be finer than was normal for proletarian wear. The style of his hair, his bearing, his very mien. Yes, they might all be mistaken for noble. But he was aboard a prole train, so he must be a prole. Except he wasn’t wearing an escutcheon.

He fingered his collar, which is where he should have been wearing the coat of arms of his bond holder. If any constables should board the train, he could be arrested. It was illegal for proles to appear in public without an escutcheon.

There was nothing he could do about it now.

Except perhaps not make it so obvious.

The train screeched and Ormuz found himself leaning to his right as it braked. With a rumble and a howl of metal, it slid into a station. Upright girders serving as pillars flickered past, gradually slowing, as if they were decelerating beside the carriage. With a last jerk and a bang, the train halted and the doors groaned open. Ormuz rose to his feet and exited.

He had no idea where he was. Somewhere in Toshi. A proletarian section of the capital city. The few people who had left the other carriages were making their way along the platform to the left, presumably towards the exit. Ormuz followed and soon passed a signed which read “Chikogu—Tani Valley”. It meant nothing to him.

At the end of the platform, an archway gave onto a staircase heading down. Unlike the station, the staircase was not enclosed and had only a metal railing. The drop to the street, at least sixty feet, was disconcerting. Hand firmly gripping the rail, Ormuz descended from the elevated railway station.