Impyrium

by Henry H. Neff

  “An exemplary page is modest and discreet. He does not grin like a baboon or fraternize with the young ladies with whom he is privileged to work. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Very clear, sir.”

  “Excellent,” said Oliveiro, stopping at a door and producing a set of keys. “I’ve got a good feeling about you, Mr. Smythe. I’d hate to see you put a foot out of line.”

  Ducking another zephyss, the underbutler opened the door and gave a horrified gasp.

  “What are you doing?” Oliveiro cried. “Where is your uniform?”

  “Steaming in the showers,” replied an unconcerned voice. “Bit wrinkled.”

  “That’s no excuse to be naked!”

  “Oh, come off it, Olly. I am not naked.”

  Oliveiro sighed and gestured for Hob to enter. “Hobson Smythe, it is my tragic duty to introduce you to your roommate, Mr. Viktor Grayson.”

  Hob entered to see a gawky teenager with wet blond hair sitting on a bed in a pair of skimpy briefs. The two glanced at each other with equal disinterest, and Viktor returned to polishing some boots. Oliveiro cleared his throat.

  “Viktor, your new roommate is younger than the last and I expect you to set a good example. You can start by not lounging about in what can only be described as a loincloth.”

  Viktor shrugged. “They’re comfortable.”

  “They’re indecent,” retorted Oliveiro. He set down Hob’s suitcase. “Mr. Smythe, if you’ll let me have your coat and jacket.”

  Once Oliveiro had the garments, he handed Hob an envelope containing his schedule and several maps. Bidding them good day, the seventh underbutler closed the door.

  “What happened to your suit?” asked Viktor.

  Hob replied “Hags” and braced for ridicule. He was used to the hazing that came with being newest or youngest. Life in a mining camp required a thick skin and a sharp tongue.

  To Hob’s surprise, his new roommate did not pounce. “Ah, well. Don’t feel too bad. When I got sniffed, it wasn’t my jacket Olly had laundered.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Wish I was,” said Viktor, reaching for an undershirt. Hob glanced around the room. It was small but had the necessities: cot, dresser, and a narrow closet with three page’s uniforms and a pair of dress boots in his size. Being underground they had no view, but the room did have a window that opened upon an airshaft.

  While Hob unpacked, he and Viktor chatted as companionably as two strangers could. He soon learned that Viktor had grown up a farmer’s son outside Avalia, had left home during the Great Drought, and served a House Minor until they gifted half their staff to the Faeregines to cover their taxes. That was six years ago. He’d been on the Sacred Isle ever since.

  And now he had to run. Giving his boots a final buff, Viktor dashed out to finish dressing in the bathroom. The instant he was gone, Hob shut the door and collapsed onto his bed. Dimming the lamp, he reached for Oliveiro’s envelope. He scanned tomorrow’s schedule; standard-looking stuff until late afternoon when he had a conspicuously vague “private appointment” in some building called Old Tom. Consulting the map, he found it on the Rowan school grounds, just behind Tùr an Ghrian.

  Closing his eyes, Hob let the staggering reality of his situation wash over him. Here he was, flopped upon a cot in the ancestral abode of the Faeregines. He had never felt so exhausted, terrified, and elated.

  This is it. This is where you make your mark.

  Rolling over, he reached for the Impyrial handbook on his nightstand. The photo of the royal family was several years old, but there was no mistaking the ghostly wisp standing off to the side, half-obscured by an archduke’s deerhound. Hob studied the princess’s shy, almost wary expression. It was a face that would hold many secrets or none. Was Hazel Faeregine a goddess or just a poor little rich girl? He’d find out soon enough.

  Flipping to the inside back cover, Hob traced two words with his fingernail:

  I’m in.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE TUTOR AND THE TYPHON

  If you have to ask how much it costs,

  you can’t afford it.

  —John Pierpont Morgan, Pre-Cataclysm financier (176–100 P.C.)

  The following day, Hazel sat in tense anticipation as Master Montague addressed the court brats on their latest essays.

  “While some of you show progress, others are falling behind. I name no names, but I have doubts some of you are fit to continue this course. Serious work is not for everyone.”

  He gestured at yesterday’s Chronicle, whose society page showed the Faeregine triplets posing with the Sylvas.

  “Class dismissed. Your essays are on my desk.”

  The girls filed down the aisles, some eagerly, others with reluctant dread. Hazel trailed behind, noting that Violet and Isabel looked pleased when they flipped to the last page of their essay booklets. They did not wait for Hazel but left in a chattering herd with the rest of their classmates. Master Montague was already sitting behind his desk, brow furrowed, an unlit pipe dangling from his mouth as he turned to a stack of graduate papers. He did not bother looking up as Hazel picked up her essay booklet. She held her breath as she opened it.

  Hazel stared at the red slash and the master’s brief but harsh remarks in stunned silence. She bit her lip, determined to keep any tears in check. Then she got angry.

  “This isn’t fair,” she said, clutching the booklet. “This is about me, not what I wrote.”

  The master set down his pen and spoke in a measured tone. “I do not assign grades based on personal feelings, Your Highness. I assign them according to a work’s merits.”

  “My essay was good,” Hazel insisted. It was true—she had never written more.

  “No,” said the master. “It was an overlong series of observations tangential to the topic. Eloquent and sporadically interesting, but outside the question’s scope. In short, a failure.”

  Weeks of frustration tumbled forth. “You just said it was interesting!”

  “And out of scope,” the master repeated. Leaning back, he laced his fingers upon his belly. “You may not believe this given my decrepitude, but I was a fair runner in my day. Tell me, Your Highness, if I enter a race and set a blistering pace in the wrong direction, do I deserve a ribbon?”

  Hazel did not answer at once. “I’m trying my best,” she said, a hint of defeat in her voice.

  “Are you?”

  “Of course I am. And I’m tired of you singling me out in class. You pick on me more than anyone else.”

  The master did not reply at once but lit his pipe and blew a plume of heady smoke toward the rafters. “Do you know what’s the very worst sort of teacher?”

  Hazel was not going to play this game. She crossed her arms and waited for the answer.

  Master Montague looked her in the eye. “An easy one. Good day, Your Highness.”

  Hazel walked mechanically out of the classroom and shut the door behind her. Dàme Rascha and Sigga were just outside, the former holding her coat. Hazel put it on while glaring at the master through the door’s window. There he sat, reading contentedly away. Behind the master, his homunculus set a record playing on the phonograph and fixed him a drink.

  I hate that man!

  “What was that about?” asked Rascha.

  Hazel thrust the essay at her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Dàme Rascha glanced at the grade and slipped the essay in her coat pocket. The vye’s expression was somber, but she said nothing, which was far more painful. Almost two months had passed since the Spider’s mandate and Hazel was still failing Montague’s class. And she had yet to make a major breakthrough in her magical studies. They were running out of time.

  “Let’s go to the tower,” said Hazel glumly.

  “We’re not going to Tùr an Ghrian,” said Rascha.

  Hazel turned. “What about Mystics?”

  “After supper. You have another lesson first.”

  Puzzled, Hazel ran through her
schedule. “No, I don’t. This is Tuesday. Etiquette meets Wednesdays and Fridays.”

  “This is a new class,” the vye clarified, “to aid your studies with Master Montague.”

  Hazel’s heart fluttered. She glanced at Sigga to confirm that someone had heard this insanity. The Grislander remained impassive. A panicked Hazel waited for a third year to pass.

  “Rascha,” she pleaded, “this is the last thing I need. I—I barely have time to sleep or even breathe! I can’t deal with yet another scholar.”

  “It’s not a scholar,” said the vye calmly.

  Hazel opened her mouth and promptly shut it. “Really? Who’s the teacher?”

  “You’ll see soon enough. He’s waiting for us in Rattlerafters.”

  Hazel was officially curious. Why had Rascha chosen Rattlerafters? Technically, it was a library, but really it was little more than an attic frequented by those who wanted a place to nap or copy homework. Few students even knew it existed since it was tucked just beneath Old Tom’s bell tower.

  As they climbed the many steps to Rattlerafters, Hazel recalled the times she and her sisters used to play hide and seek there. Once they’d chanced upon some fifth years kissing in the stacks, a spectacle that left Violet scandalized and Isabel in silent hysterics. Hazel had watched with fascinated revulsion until Isabel flung an eraser and the triplets fled, hooting like gibbons. She missed those days. Back then, Violet had almost been human.

  When Hazel reached Rattlerafters, she did not find a teacher but the boy Rascha had poached from Lady Sylva. He stood at attention next to an easel displaying a large map of Impyrium, dressed in a page’s uniform. A confused Hazel turned on one heel to survey the tables and stacks. “Where’s the teacher?”

  Dàme Rascha gestured at the boy. “The young man is going to talk to you about the Muirlands and answer any questions you may have about his life in the Northwest Province.”

  Hazel was horrified. “You mean the page?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  She glanced at the boy, embarrassed for both of them. She lowered her voice even more. “Rascha, I cannot possibly take lessons from a page. If my sisters—if anyone—heard of such a thing . . .” Hazel could not even imagine the fallout.

  “You need to learn about the Muirlands,” said her tutor simply. “Who better to acquaint you with them than a native?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  The vye held up a finger. “One hour. If it isn’t valuable, we will not do it again.”

  Hazel exhaled and glanced miserably at the map. The debacle would take even longer if she argued. “Very well,” she whispered. “But this means I get the painting.”

  The vye agreed, and Hazel promptly sat at the nearest table, back straight, hands clasped, the embodiment of academic piety. Channeling her inner Violet, she offered the page a prim smile. “Good afternoon.”

  He bowed. “Good afternoon, Your Highness.”

  “May I ask is your name?”

  “Hobson Smythe.”

  Hazel nodded. “I remember you from Lady Sylva’s dinner party. I don’t wish to be nosy but would you please share your teaching qualifications? Where were you educated?”

  “Dusk Elementary, Your Highness. But I never graduated.”

  Hazel shot Rascha a disbelieving look.

  “I had to take a mining job in the Sentries, Your Highness.”

  Hazel considered chiding him for speaking out of turn, but decided against it. There was no sense in being rude.

  He explained while pointing to a stretch of mountains in the map’s northwest corner. They were so far away they might have been on another planet.

  “Well,” said Hazel, “you were clever for solving Lady Sylva’s riddle—you needn’t bow—but I don’t see the point of this. With all due respect, I’m not studying to be a miner.”

  The page inclined his head to acknowledge that no offense was taken. Something about him struck Hazel as odd. He lacked the meek deference endemic to servants. Quite the opposite, in fact. He projected a self-assurance that she found puzzling, even daunting. In some ways, he reminded her of Sigga.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Thirteen, Your Highness.”

  Hazel was shocked. She’d have guessed sixteen, even seventeen. None of the boys at court had shoulders like those, much less anyone so young. A result of manual labor, no doubt.

  “Well, at your age, I doubt you could be such an expert, but if you claim to know so much about the Muirlands, I’m sure you can name every archduchy in Afrique.” Master Montague had posed the same question on her last exam. Hazel had managed only three, but she would be surprised if the boy could name any. Afrique was halfway across the world.

  The boy did not even blink. “Tippoh, Tythos, Acheral, Azalia, Südsteppe, Laothe, Islan, and Muirplein. Cairn-Fomora is the capital, but technically isn’t a duchy.”

  Dàme Rascha chuffed with approval. Hazel frowned. “How do you know that? More important, why do you know that?”

  “I learned it when studying for Provinces.”

  Hazel knew of the exams. You’d be laughed out of Provinces was a common refrain whenever Master Montague was particularly disgusted with the court brats. The tests were infamously grueling and competitive.

  “And how did you place?” she asked.

  “First, Your Highness.”

  Hazel blinked. “Out of how many?”

  The boy considered a moment. “I could not say exactly. Fifty thousand? Perhaps more.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Hazel. “Why didn’t you attend an Impyrial college? My family would have paid your way.”

  “I needed to support my mother and sister,” he said simply. “My father is dead, and my mother’s tribe wouldn’t help us on account my father was a skänder.”

  “What’s a skänder?” said Hazel.

  The boy looked past her at Sigga. “Your Highness’s bodyguard is a skänder.”

  “No, she isn’t,” said Hazel. “She’s a Grislander.”

  “Forgive me,” said the page. “Skänder is a term in the Northwest for someone with white skin. My father was skänder, but my mother’s full Hauja. The Hauja are a tribe that goes back almost to the Cataclysm.”

  Hazel felt sorry for him. “They cast her out because she married someone different?”

  “My parents weren’t married, Your Highness. For a Hauja woman to wed, the tribe’s shaman must perform the ceremony. He refused.”

  “So, you’re a bastard,” Hazel observed.

  His mouth twitched. “If you like, Your Highness.”

  Had she said something wrong? Technically, Hazel was a bastard but it had never bothered her. With Faeregines, the maternal line was all that mattered. Paternity was a footnote.

  Still, Hazel sensed she had offended him, which had not been her intention. “I make no reflection,” she said quickly. “Did your lineage affect your standing with the Hauja?”

  “I have no standing with them,” he replied. “The tribe only allowed me to sit séyu—their rite of passage—because they assumed I would fail.”

  “Did you?”

  A faint smile. “No. I survived the eight days, killed a Cheshirewulf, and ate its heart.”

  The statement made the entire lesson worthwhile. “You ate a Cheshirewulf’s heart?” Hazel exclaimed.

  “Yes, Your Highness. Every Hauja boy has to track and hunt a Cheshirewulf to prove himself. The tribe holds them sacred.”

  Hazel had seen many pictures of Cheshirewulfs in books. Monstrous creatures. It was said that some still prowled the Direwood, but she imagined those were just stories.

  “Are they really as big as a horse?” she asked.

  The boy considered. “More like a good-sized pony. But they’re stealthy—can disappear entirely when they hold their breaths. But I was more worried about the weather. The elders send you off without any food or furs.”

  Hazel raised her eyebrows. “And you lived eight days like that?�
�

  “No,” replied the page. “Not even natives can survive long under those conditions. On the second day I got lucky and shot a caribou with my Boekka. It gave me what I needed.”

  Hazel sat transfixed as the page went on to tell her how he’d tracked the Cheshirewulf, tricked it with a reflection, and ate its steaming heart by a frozen river. It was like reading one of Uncle Basil’s storybooks, except the hero was right in front of her wearing a page’s uniform. Something about that struck her as profoundly sad.

  “Why didn’t you stay with the Hauja and live on Bear Lake?” she asked. “It sounds so interesting.”

  “My mother was in Dusk,” he explained. “And I didn’t want to live with the Hauja; I just wanted to prove I was as good as they were. Anyway, surviving séyu didn’t matter to them. When I came back, the shaman tossed the Cheshirewulf’s pelt on the bonfire and called me a skänder trickster. Warriors drove me out of the camp. Almost killed me.” The page tapped a scar near his hairline.

  What could have made that? thought Hazel. An ax?

  She found it profoundly unjust. “What about your mother’s family? Why didn’t they stand up to the shaman?”

  For the first time, the boy looked like a typical page. He appeared touchingly shy, even embarrassed by her question. He seemed to realize this and stood up very straight.

  “The shaman was my grandfather, Your Highness. The warriors, my uncles.”

  “Oh,” said Hazel, unsure what else to say. Bad as her family was, they weren’t trying to exile or kill her. Violet might someday, but she wasn’t empress yet.

  Old Tom announced his presence. The page practically sprang out of his boots as the clock’s chimes—almost deafening at this proximity—began tolling the hour. Hazel could not help but laugh. He recovered quickly, however, and promptly straightened the map he’d nearly knocked over. She was still giggling when the windows stopped vibrating. The page glanced up at the low ceiling.

  “I suppose that’s why they call it Rattlerafters,” he said.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Hazel. She cleared her throat. “Well, Mr. Smythe, your stories are very entertaining, but our hour is up. Have you anything else to add?”