by V. St. Clair
“Yes, go and change and report for duty. Later I need to tell you about Parl and a note I got last night.” She waved, and Topher flinched and said, “What about Parl?”
“You’re in a hurry. I’ll tell you later.” She suddenly didn’t want to ruin the mood by mentioning it.
“For this, I can make time.” He frowned, staring at her with intensity.
Jessamine sighed. “I may have lied when I said Parl died in medical. Kessel dragged him to two-eighty-one and I tried to get him to tell me who was conspiring with him.” She didn’t pause for breath, determined to confess as quickly as possible. “He startled me yesterday morning with the knowledge that I made Shellina an ambassador, and I accidentally killed him. I still need to move the body.” She grimaced. “Oh, and someone left me a note at the reception last night threatening my life.”
Topher took all of this in with a blink and said, “And you were mad at me for hiding my work with an emblem?” He shook his head slightly to clear it. “I’ll deal with the body. I want more details later on exactly what happened.” He glanced at the clock again and walked briskly to the outer door, stopping at the last moment and saying “I love you,” before disappearing.
Jessamine sighed and dressed, examining herself in the mirror for any telltale signs that something had changed between her and Topher last night. She didn’t know what she expected to find. As far as she could tell she looked completely normal—maybe happier. She forced away an idiotic smile and left her rooms.
Majors Gareth and Reya were waiting for her, though she had no idea how long they had been standing there and if they had seen Topher leave.
“Majors, good morning,” she greeted them. “What’s going on?”
“I thought we should report, Excellence,” Reya began. “Several of us grew concerned when Topher left the reception early last night and came back to check on him, but we were unable to locate him.” She looked like she had a fair guess as to where he might have been, but was determined not to say it. Gareth was looking pointedly at a spot on the wall. “We wanted to report his absence in case you would like us to quietly form a search party.”
“I’m sure he’s alright,” Jessamine answered calmly. “He probably had business to attend to and was kept out late, but I’m confident he’ll report for duty as scheduled.”
Reya grinned and it took everything Jessamine had inside of her not to grin back.
“Thank you, Excellency. We’ll stand down.” She and Gareth dismissed themselves, though Jessamine could swear she heard Reya say she won the bet and demand money as they walked away.
She walked through the main living room and turned down Shellina’s hallway, knocking loudly on the outer door and trying to ignore the pang of guilt for sleeping with a man she knew Shellina liked.
She’ll understand—someday.
For a long moment her sister didn’t answer, and Jessamine considered using her biochip access to let herself in, but courtesy won out and she held herself at bay until the door finally opened.
Shellina looked unusually ruffled for this time of morning. A robe was pulled over her nightgown and her morning hair and makeup routines hadn’t even been started. Her eyes widened at the sight of Jessamine standing there.
“Jessa, what’s going on? You never visit me this early.”
“You’re usually already up and moving by now,” Jessamine remarked.
Shellina’s cheeks flushed and she said, “Well I stayed at the reception much later than you and got the cleanup crews started.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot the reception probably went on until the early hours of the morning.” Jessamine looked around the hallway. “Why are we talking in the doorway? Let’s sit inside together.”
“Um…” a look of panic crossed her sister’s face. “Actually, I’m…not alone. Can I get back to you in a few minutes?”
This was an unexpected development. Jessamine wasn’t aware of her sister being involved with anyone, and immediately wondered who she was seeing.
“Oh! I see. I need you to call a meeting with the General Assembly this morning, and I also want you and Darius there. Follow up with me when you have it arranged and we’ll discuss this—” she waved a hand to summarize the whole situation “—later.”
Shellina raised her eyebrows in interest, looking unusually young with her hair down around her face.
“What are you calling a meeting for on the morning after your wedding? I thought today would be a day of rest.”
“Quite the opposite. I’m feeling ambitious, and with the wedding behind me I can focus properly on work again.” She grinned, unusually energetic after her night with Topher. It was so much easier to feel hopeful and happy with him.
“Oh Lord, you’ve got that manic gleam in your eye…” Shellina made a face. “You’re going to make some huge policy change while everyone’s still too hungover to argue, aren’t you?”
Jessamine laughed and said, “You know me too well. I hope you had an enjoyable evening.” She gestured into the room behind Shellina and turned away, still curious about who Shellina was involved with but determined to afford her some privacy.
In the time it took her sister to schedule the meeting Jessamine ate breakfast, created a rough draft of the bill she was proposing, and completed her workout for the day. She had just finished the last pullup when a voice behind her said, “There you are.”
She dropped down to the floor and turned to find her husband leaning in the doorway of the training room. He wore a navy suit with no visible indicators of his new rank, looking unchanged by their wedding. Jessamine had no idea what she had been expecting, since he wasn’t part of the military and couldn’t wear light armor like she did, but she was relieved by how normal things felt.
Maybe the arranged marriage could work after all…
“Darius, good morning. How was the party?” She wiped her face with a towel and began pulling her armor back on.
“I hardly remember it, so it must have been a good time.” He smiled, touching the side of his head. “Didn’t you leave early for something? I seem to remember you being called away on business.”
“Oh, yes,” Jessamine scrambled to come up with a convincing lie on the spot and settled for being vague. “It wasn’t as big a deal as we originally thought, so I was able to go to bed fairly early.”
“Shelly said you were nearly bouncing with energy, so you must have slept like a rock,” Darius noted, suppressing a yawn. “Everyone else was hoping to sleep in for a change, but I’m told there’s a General Assembly meeting we need to attend in a few minutes.”
“Yes, I expect everyone will be tired, but there’s no time for lying around while we have murderers on the loose and important work to do. Besides, our wedding was a cornerstone event. What better way to usher in a new era than with historic, long-overdue policy changes?”
“I’m not arguing your sentiment, just the time of day for it.” He yawned again. “We could’ve done this over dinner.”
“I’ll phone two-fifty to send up enough syringes of Alerol to keep the entire Assembly awake and alert if that’s what it takes.” She snapped the last of her armor into place. “Now let’s go.”
They set off together towards the main stairwell. Darius groaned, but Jessamine saw no reason to take the elevator down a single flight of stairs.
“We need to discuss our sleeping arrangement,” Darius blurted out, apropos of nothing, as soon as they were alone on the stairwell.
“What about it?” she asked, some of her good mood over Topher evaporating as she prepared to have this conversation much earlier than she’d hoped.
“People have already begun to comment on the fact that we’re not sharing a room, saying our marriage is only political.”
“Our marriage was political,” Jessamine agreed readily. “We hardly knew each other when it was arranged.”
“Yes, but I’ve been living here for months, trying to get to know you better, but you spend all your time clo
seted up with work and with your Majors.”
Jessamine wasn’t sure whether the comment about the Majors was supposed to be a barb aimed at one in particular, or whether he was making a general statement. That was the problem with Darius, she reflected glumly, she never knew if he was trying to insult her intentionally or if she was giving him too much credit.
“What part of running a planet isn’t living up to your expectations?” she asked. “Did you think we’d be sitting with our feet propped up, wearing crowns while servants fed us grapes? Attending lavish parties every night and sleeping in until noon?” She scowled. “I’ve told you since the beginning it is grueling, ceaseless work. There are no crowns, there are no vacations, everyone at the parties has a hidden agenda, and some of them would love to see us fall flat on our face and be overthrown.”
“I know all of that,” Darius made an ugly face. “But you’re supposed to be sharing everything with me and including me in all the decisions. Instead you let your Majors report to you privately, you allow them to withhold information from me, and you keep me out of important meetings. I feel like a prop, not a partner, and I can tell others are laughing about it behind my back.”
Jessamine rounded on him in the stairwell and said, “Why in the world would I involve you in all of my most confidential business just because you have a title now? Do you have a degree in government affairs? In law? Do you have any certifications in counterterrorism, espionage, or global policy? Have you studied environmentalism, sociology, or anything related to the management of a planet? Have you taken and passed the tests for top-level government clearance, including the chemical-induced ones? Have you been tested to see if you will crack under torture and spill classified information?”
He was red-faced with anger now.
“You know I haven’t—”
“I have done all of those things, and more. My Majors went through extremely comprehensive programs to ensure their capabilities and loyalties before they were ever given enhancers—and two of them still managed to turn traitor on us with no one the wiser. Programs have been made available to you, but you haven’t yet seen fit to take any of them. So tell me, what qualifications do you bring to the table?”
Darius was indignant when he said, “I have a number of business degrees—”
“Yes, you do,” Jessamine acknowledged. “If you consider the responsibilities I’ve given you, you’ll see they are aligned to your skillset. You manage relations with the guilds, the unions, and the Trade Association. If you want more, go through the necessary steps to earn it and I’ll begin involving you in a broader range of activities, but you don’t get an all-access pass just because you married me.”
Darius was quiet for a long moment, working his mouth as though he wanted to argue but wasn’t sure what to say. Finally, he settled on, “None of that has any bearing on our sleeping arrangements.”
Jessamine was hoping he would forget about his original issue in the furor of their argument, but no such luck.
“My rooms are the only place I have in this whole building where I can just be alone and relax.”
“You let some people into them,” he observed.
“Yes. Hanna, my sister, and a few of my Majors have been inside them for one reason or another, but they don’t reside there,” she explained, forcing patience. “I still don’t feel like I know you terribly well, and frankly, we don’t have a lot in common. Being married doesn’t change that.”
“That’s all well and good, but I’ve been trying to get to know you better and you haven’t made time for me. You can’t blame me for our lack of closeness.”
Jessamine couldn’t argue the truth in that. She had no desire to spend time with him and had prioritized everything else imaginable over Darius.
“You’re right,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. It’s just been a very hectic time for me—for us all. I never imagined being the Vicereine so soon, and if my father was still here we would have had all the time in the world to become better acquainted.”
Darius softened.
“I don’t think any of us could have seen that coming. I didn’t know your father very well, but he was a strong leader and I’m sorry for what happened to him.” He looked uncomfortable when he said, “Do you think there are more traitors in the Provo, or did you mean what you said at the Academy when you gave your speech?”
Jessamine frowned. “I’m not sure. There might be. Part of what I’ve spent so much time on recently is trying to figure out who is trustworthy and who might not be, because I intend to root out any more traitors and deal with them before they get us.”
“I see.” He looked worried.
“Please don’t make it known that I am investigating my own Majors. Very few people are in on that particular secret.”
He looked buoyed by her trust, which was as much as she could give him right now. While it was a secret, it wouldn’t be horrible if he leaked it, because people could probably already guess that after two betrayals within the Provo-Major, she would be looking into the others as well. This was a fine way to determine how good Darius was at keeping government secrets, with minimal damage if he failed the test.
“I’ll sign up for a couple of the classes you mentioned earlier,” Darius conceded, surprising her.
“Then I will block out half an hour on my calendar each day to spend with you going forward. I know it’s not much, but until things settle down a little, my time is still at a premium.”
He looked mollified by the concession, and Jessamine tried not to inwardly groan at the thought of spending time with only Darius for company each day.
The door to the stairwell opened and Kristoff stuck his head in and said, “Ah, there you two are. The Assembly meeting was supposed to start ten minutes ago and I was sent to find you.”
He looked extremely interested in why the two of them were standing in the stairwell together, but Jessamine only said, “Thank you, Major. We’ll head there now.”
She walked past him, leading the way to the meeting room for the General Assembly and trying to recapture her energy from this morning before going inside. With a deep breath at the threshold, she opened the door.
She was pleased to see the full Assembly in attendance, in addition to Shellina, Darius, and a clutch of Majors, which included Topher.
“Good morning—well, it’s almost lunch time, actually,” Jessamine greeted the room at large, not allowing her eyes to focus on anyone in particular. “I know you’re all tired from the festivities last night, but yesterday marked a new chapter in Elaria’s history, and I intend to begin this new chapter with momentum.”
Everyone looked alert and reasonably focused as she made her way to her seat on one side of the circular table, while Darius moved to sit with the others on the raised benches in the guest area. Jessamine suspected a large amount of Alerol had been used to get everyone up and moving this morning.
“What sort of project did you have in mind?” Assemblyman Lavesh spoke first, looking wary. “Most of our resources were strained to the limit to deal with the wedding, and now we are trying to return things to normal. This isn’t a good time for more upheaval and uncertainty.”
“There is never a good time to roll out new initiatives,” Harold interjected, shrugging. “After a major event—like a Viceregal’s wedding—is as good a time as any.”
“Perhaps we should let the Vicereine present her proposal before making a decision on it,” Sky-Leader Rolf commented dryly.
Jessamine projected the draft of her proposal onto the nearby screens.
“My proposal is in two parts. First, I want to sign a law making it illegal for any employer to discriminate against someone because of their Gifted status.” She paused as a torrent of discussion and dissent rose up.
“Are you insane?” Assemblyman Freeman demanded at the same time as Lavesh said, “The oversight for that would be horrendous!”
“This is the last thing we need right now!”
“The Gifted can’t work in technology!”
Jessamine stood up and raised her hands for silence, looking around the room to see if anyone appeared to be on her side. Jarlais was quiet and hard to read, though he was generally more tolerant of the Gifted than others, and Skye and Rolf remained silent and neutral, which meant she had their support. Shellina and Darius looked stunned, and Topher—well, of course Topher would support her, though he remained as stoic as ever. A few of the other Majors looked less enthusiastic.
“Enough,” Jessamine insisted, waiting for everyone to be quiet before continuing. “There is no valid reason why employers should be able to refuse to hire Gifted based solely on the fact that they are Gifted, nor should they be able to pay them less for equal work. I understand the tech industry is going to be an exception, simply because Gifts tend to make elarium-based technology go haywire, but they are the only exception I can conceive of. My Integration Initiative is not just for show; I am serious about bringing the Gifted back into all aspects of society as equals. Now, if there are any objections not fueled entirely by prejudice, feel free to make them.”
Lavesh raised his hand and said, “Freeman is right. Oversight of such a thing will be a nightmare. You would need to have all employers file the reasoning for their hiring decisions, and a governing body to oversee all of them to make sure the system isn’t being taken advantage of. We don’t have the resources for it.”
“It is quite literally the job of the Provo-Minor to oversee administrative initiatives,” Jessamine replied, remaining calm. “It’s why we employee thousands of them. Every time my father came up with a new idea requiring a governing body, he pulled qualified volunteers from the Minors to head up the effort and gave them permission to hire whoever else they needed to make it happen. If the initiative fails, those Minors are reabsorbed back into another area; if it succeeds and we suddenly find ourselves short of staff, we’ll hire more. This is not my first day in the Augenspire, Assemblyman Lavesh.”
An uncomfortable moment of silence followed and then Darius, of all people, surprised her by saying, “Weren’t the Provo historically chosen—in part—because of their dislike of the Gifted and their willingness to uphold the status quo?” He paused. “Your father didn’t exactly advertise for it in his day, but he also didn’t cull those applicants out, and the Provo still lean decidedly anti-Gifted. Are those the people you want in charge of overseeing the execution of this particular law?”
