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

by Sales, Ian

  “She’s clearly taken with you. Although I don’t think I’d ever be seen in public in a dress that short.”

  Ormuz gestured dismissively. He leaned forward. “Never mind that. Tell me what’s been happening,” he demanded.

  “You’ve only been gone a couple of days,” replied Finesz.

  “Come on, Sliva. You know what I mean.”

  “Well, the Admiral is definitely on the Throne now—they’re going to issue a proclamation tomorrow. Ahasz was carted off to the House of Rectitude. So at least he’ll be comfortable.”

  “Did she say anything about me?”

  Finesz shook her head. “Nothing. She’s been closeted with Involutes since you left. Lords know what they’ve been plotting.”

  “We were used, Sliva,” said Ormuz, clenching a fist. “There’s more to this than we thought, I’m sure of it. She swore to me she would not put herself on the Throne. But that’s just what she did!”

  “I was there, Casimir. I saw it all.”

  Ormuz shrugged. The events of that day had preoccupied him, and he was sure something he had seen or heard or experienced would make sense of them, would make sense of the Admiral’s abrupt reversal of her word.

  “How’s Rizbeka?” he asked, thinking he should change the subject—if only for his own sake.

  Maganda answered, “Lieutenant-Commander Rinharte is fine, Casimir. She sends her regards.”

  “What about you? Are they letting you keep your field promotion?”

  “Probably not. In fact, there are rumours we’ll all be up for mutiny.”

  “The Admiral—I mean, the Empress—will look after you.”

  Maganda gave a weak smile and shrugged.

  “Did you bring money?” he asked Finesz.

  “Yes, of course.” She pulled a tight roll of notes from a pocket of her jacket and passed it across.

  “I’ll pay you back,” Ormuz said.

  “Ah. No need to worry there.” She dug into another pocket and held out something in the palm of her hand. “And this.”

  It was an escutcheon, depicting an ancient sailing ship sitting in harbour, beneath a black cloud. “Who’s is this?” he asked.

  “I called in a favour,” Finesz explained. “Your old coat of arms—Divine Providence’s—belonged to the Order of the Left Hand. You’d be allowed to use it on Shuto, but I suspect they’d track its use through the data-pools. That—” She pointed to the device Ormuz now held—“That’s trick OPI one. We use ones like that when we need to keep witnesses safe.”

  “I can use this anywhere in Chikogu?”

  “Anywhere on Shuto, Casimir. And if you need more crowns, any local bank will advance you funds on it.”

  “I—” He stopped. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

  “I don’t know why you insist on staying here. Come back with us. We can find somewhere for you.”

  He shook his head. “No. The masquerade is over. You heard the Admiral.”

  “But what about the duchy? They might give you that.”

  “No, they won’t.” He looked at Maganda. “I’m right, aren’t I, Romi? I was born a prole, so they’ll never give it to me.

  “But you are the duke!” Finesz protested. “Or at least, you’re as much the duke as Ahasz is.”

  “Ssh.” Azeel had entered the bar. She was carrying a tray on which sat a brightly-polished brass coffee pot and a collection of cups and saucers. She crossed to the table, put down the tray and set about serving everyone.

  “Oh,” said Finesz. “You didn’t have to get out your best, ah, silver just for us.”

  Ormuz winced.

  Azeel looked up from pouring, glared at Finesz, and then looked back down at the cup she was filling.

  Once everyone had a steaming cup before them, she straightened and gazed down at a fourth empty cup remaining on the tray. Ormuz reached across, set the cup upright on its saucer, put it down before the chair beside him, then lifted the coffee pot and filled the cup. “Inni,” he said.

  “You must be a very kind person,” Finesz said to Azeel as she settled gingerly beside Ormuz.

  “Why?”

  “You took in Casimir when he had nothing—no money, not even an escutcheon.”

  “Anyone else would’ve done the same.” She paused. “My lady.”

  “No,” said Ormuz. “No, they wouldn’t have.”

  “He’s right,” Finesz added. “And I should know.”

  Azeel shrugged. Her eyes settled on the roll of crowns before Ormuz. She reached across and picked it up. “You have all this money?” she asked in wonder.

  “Is it too much?” asked Finesz.

  Ormuz took the roll of notes from Azeel. “There’s lots I need to get,” he told her. “I’ll need you to help me.”

  She nodded eagerly and for a moment he wondered if it were the scrip which had made her eyes shine. No, he decided, it was the prospect of helping him.

  “It’s time we went,” said Finesz. She put down her coffee cup. She had drunk most of it. Maganda had quietly finished off her own cup.

  The inspector rose to her feet. “I’ve a feeling you’ll be safe here, Casimir,” she said. “But if you need my help, you need only call.” To Azeel, she added, “It was nice to meet you.”

  Maganda was also on her feet. She sketched a brief bow. “Casimir,” she acknowledged. She gave Azeel a quick smile.

  Ormuz stood. He said his farewells and watched the two women leave the pub. He heard Azeel push back her chair and set about gathering up the crockery. Yes, he thought, he had been lucky to find the Empress Glorina, lucky to find Azeel, lucky to find this safe haven.

  He would make sure Azeel was rewarded for it.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Across the road from the staff car, an iron staircase descended from an elevated railway station through half a dozen switchbacks. There was an elevator next to the stairs, a shaft of ornate metal filigree; but that was for the use of yeomen and nobles only. Finesz leaned forward, cupped her chin in one hand and stared at the staircase on the other side of the street. She was expecting Ormuz.

  She had not visited this area of Toshi before. This was no surprise: the city was huge and she had rarely visited its proletarian precincts. In earlier years, she’d spent most of her time at Imperial Court, at the townhouses of her noble “friends”, and in the fashionable districts where her lovers had kept her. Even after she joined the Office of the Procurator Imperial, she had no reason to enter such areas as this. She did not even know the district’s name.

  Not, she reflected ruefully, that she needed to. She wouldn’t be returning here. It was a grim and depressing place. The elevated railway left the street in permanent shadow and the buildings to either side were of a dark stone which seemed to trap the light. The facades were in need of repair, with crumbling lintels and chipped cornices. Many of the stone flags on the surface of the road were cracked. Some had disappeared entirely, leaving gaping holes. She could see one such hole no more than a few feet from the staff car. It appeared as though there were an open space beneath the road—a tunnel, perhaps; or the cellars of the tenements.

  The place was a disgrace. Finesz thought idly about finding out who owned it and paying them a visit. She would use her position to ensure they made repairs…

  No, she was fooling herself. She had no such authority. No laws were being broken. And most did not care if proles lived in squalour.

  She sighed. Why had Ormuz insist she meet him here? She would have been happy to pick him up from the pub where he lived. But, of course, he was a prole now and being taken away in an OPI staff car would only cause trouble. The last time they’d spoken he had mentioned he was having difficulty being accepted by those who frequented the pub. He might not even be safe there. Muggings and street violence were common in the prole districts of Toshi. Ormuz could defend himself… with a sword. But he was no longer permitted to carry one.

 
The sooner he was out of Chikogu, the better. Finesz wanted to offer him one of the OPI’s safe apartments, but Norioko might learn of it. Ormuz would certainly not be safe if the Involutes knew his location.

  A figure moving down the staircase caught her attention. It was Ormuz. He descended quickly, keeping his gaze down, and only looked up when he reached the street. He hurried across the road to the staff car. Finesz slid back in her seat as Ormuz pulled open the door. He scrambled in and settled next to her.

  He wore a plain jacket and trousers which had clearly not been tailored to fit him, and Finesz opened her mouth to ask why he was dressed so poorly. She shut her mouth without speaking and coloured as the reason occurred to her.

  “How have you been?” she asked, hoping he had not spotted her embarrassment.

  Ormuz nodded and scratched at his neck as though irritated by his shirt’s material. “Fine,” he replied.

  And in that one word, Finesz knew Ormuz had returned to his roots. She could no longer see the young prince he’d been when he arrived on Shuto, and marvelled that his return to his proletarian beginnings had been so quick. She’d seen him transform from prole to lordling on the journey to Linna, and witnessed further changes during their stay with the Duke of Kunta. How much, she wondered, of that metamorphosis had been the clothes he wore? Now he looked like a young and somewhat effete prole.

  She remembered the assembly on Linna and Ormuz the newly-minted peer trying to drum up support for his crusade to save the Imperial Throne from the Serpent. Things had not quite turned out as planned. And all this because she had followed a regimental-lieutenant out to Makarta Province and witnessed his attempt to kill a young man who served aboard a data-freighter.

  Finez knew her history—some parts admittedly better than others. In her youth, she had been quite fond of melodramas set during the Intolerance. They had not been especially accurate—history rarely had so coherent a narrative—but she had read up on the subject to improve her knowledge. Now… Now, she was writing the future. Perhaps, thousands of years hence, visitors to the Imperial Household District would see the ruin of Mount Yama and wonder what had happened. Much like the District’s mysterious Ruins. She smiled. She quite liked the idea of being part of a historical mystery.

  “Why must I go and see him?” Ormuz asked.

  “No one said you ‘must’,” replied Finesz, “but I thought you might like to meet him.”

  “I’ve already met him.”

  “In battle. That hardly counts. Besides, I thought you might want to get away from your pub for a while. How are things with your little barmaid?”

  “She’s not a barmaid,” he replied mulishly. “She works for a company writing protocols for data-pools. And things are good with Inni. Last night we went to a dance club.”

  “It’s serious?” Finesz was surprised—from Ormuz’s tone of voice, it was clear he was sleeping with her. Had he forgotten the Admiral already?

  “She’d be a good match for me.”

  So that was it. He was determined to fit in as a proletarian. He had either given up on his dreams of betterment, or turned his back on them after the Admiral’s rejection.

  “Well, perhaps,” Finesz said. “She seems very nice. What about your wound? How is that?”

  Ormuz put a hand to his side. “Healing,” he said. “It barely hurts now.”

  “The duke is… an interesting man,” Finesz said, returning to the original subject of their conversation. “You have much in common.” As soon as she had said it, she felt foolish. Ormuz was a clone of Ahasz, so of course they had a great deal in common. Although they were very different people.

  “Indeed,” Ormuz said, a brief flash of the young lordling Finesz had known on Linna. “How is it you know him so well?”

  “When I was a prisoner, just before you arrived and lifted the siege. We spoke every day for about a week.” She smiled at the memory. “He’d been there for half a year; I think he was lonely.”

  “I can’t believe you consorted with the enemy! Sliva, he tried to take the Throne.”

  Ormuz scowled and Finesz guessed he had reminded himself of how the Admiral had become empress. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said to him.

  “She promised me!”

  “I don’t think she ever intended to take the Throne. It was only at the last she changed her mind.”

  “Or had it changed for her,” Ormuz said bitterly. “It was that Involute.”

  “Yes, Gyome…” She glanced at Ormuz and saw he was staring at her. “Ah,” she said. “Gyome… Baron Kanban… my boss… It seems he’s an Involute. Has been all along. I’m almost certain that was him at the end there.”

  “In the Emperor’s study?”

  Finesz nodded, remembering the Admiral being taken to one side by the Involute. The pair of them had stood beside a smashed bookcase, its contents scattered across the floor, white beneath a layer of dust, many trampled into the carpet. They had discussed something quietly and Finesz had thought then that there was more than one conspiracy at work in this rebellion.

  “I can’t work for him anymore,” she told Ormuz. “Not for an Involute.”

  “You’re going to resign from the Oppies?”

  “I haven’t decided. I’m not sure I want to stay—in the OPI, or on Shuto. But I can’t go back to my old profession.” She gave a wry grin. “And I’ve spent pretty much my entire life in Toshi.”

  “Have you ever been to a prison?” Finesz asked as the staff car left Toshi behind. They were in the foothills of the Kami range now, where lush verdant meadows spread to either side of the road in undulating folds. Far ahead, the ground rose more abruptly, the green left behind as the rock raced towards the heights of the mountain peaks. There, the sun shone brightly, as if in another country on another clock. Mount Takama dominated the horizon, grey and black and indigo and white, the cloudless blue sky a mirror and the mountain a vast triangular section of it which had cracked and shattered to reveal the wall beneath.

  Ormuz turned from the window. “No, I haven’t,” he said.

  “Well, the House of Rectitude isn’t exactly a prison. I mean, people are incarcerated there, but…”

  “It’s for high nobles.”

  Finesz nodded. “Yes,” she admitted.

  “So I should expect some sort of luxury hotel. Every convenience, every whim catered to… except they can never leave.”

  The inspector laughed. She grinned at Ormuz. “Yes, something like that. The House is as richly appointed as any duke’s palace. I don’t doubt that some of the inmates live better there than they do in their fiefs.”

  “That’s insane. People would commit crimes just so they can be sent there.”

  “I’m not saying it doesn’t happen,” Finesz replied. “But you should know by now what you can, or can’t, get away with as a high noble. You were a prince for half a year.”

  “Some people can get away with anything,” Ormuz said bitterly.

  Finesz opened her mouth to contradict this, but closed it as she recalled a previous visit to the House of Rectitude in search of Norioko.

  She turned back to gaze out of the window beside her. The staff car had entered a dark and shadowed forest. Needle-leafed evergreens leaned inwards and over the road to form an organic vaulting, filtering the sun as though under a green sea. An irregular and wide-spaced stockade of black trunks lined the route, and in the gaps between the trees, Finesz saw yet more ebon pillars forming labyrinthine ways through the gloom.

  Her mood began to echo that of the view from the limousine, and she wondered what this trip to visit the captive duke would bring. Ariman umar Vonshuan, Duke of Ahasz. Ormuz was Ahasz, and yet he was not.

  “What’s he like?”

  “The duke? You’ll find out soon enough—No, it’s not that.” She leaned forward and peered at Ormuz, and she knew that he would understand exactly what she meant.

  “I liked him, Casimir. He’s char
ming.” She grinned abruptly, breaking the sombre mood. “He certainly has more polish than you.”

  As she spoke, the limousine left the forest and bright sunlight shone into the vehicle. The sudden brightness briefly blinded Finesz and she put a hand to her eyes. Ormuz was reduced to a black silhouette.

  “I think you’ll like him,” she said, “although you might not believe you should.” She dropped her hand but her sight had yet to fully return.

  “He tried to take the Imperial Throne, Sliva.”

  “Ah yes.” Finesz sat back and folded her arms across her bosom. “I was there, you know.” She shook her head. “Oh, Casimir,” she said sadly, “what have we got ourselves into?”

  “You say that every time you see me,” he accused.

  “Because each time I find it hard to believe what you’ve managed to drag me into.”

  “Me?” he scoffed. “You were involved long before you met me. Remember? You followed a Housecarl to Darrus.”

  She sighed. “Don’t remind me. When I think back now how close I came to walking away…”

  “Norioko told you back off, didn’t he?”

  “He did. But like a fool, I disobeyed him. Not that I knew he was an Involute at the time.”

  The House of Rectitude was visible now as the road swung in a wide arc to the left. The limousine descended the slope to the House’s entrance. As it approached the bailey, a pair of Bailiffs stepped out of a guard-room. One held up a hand. The staff car drew smoothly to a stop.

  Troop-Sergeant Assaun handed across identification to one guard, while the other peered into the passenger compartment. He frowned at Ormuz, who pointedly took his collar and thrust forward the escutcheon pinned there. The guard scowled but moved away. Soon after, the car floated into the House of Rectitude’s manicured grounds.

  “What will they do to him?” Ormuz asked.

  “Ahasz?” Finesz gestured vaguely with one hand. “I’ve no idea. The sentence for open rebellion is execution and corruption of blood. But the Vonshuans are powerful, so I suspect the duchy won’t be touched.”

  Corruption of blood: revoking the patent of nobility. If Ahasz had possessed any heirs or immediate family, they would become proletarians and all their holdings would revert to the Imperial Throne.