Zotikas: Episode 1: Clash of Heirs

by Storey, Rob

  Moshalli had surprised Velirith, visiting her chambers in the Vel apartments at the top of Vel-Taradan. The three tower complex of Vel-Taradan served as the ambassadorial and economic headquarters of the Vel family in Avertori. Though very comfortable, Velirith much preferred their home in Velakun, deep within the mountains of Ardan to the northeast.

  “Velirith, it’s so wonderful to see you again!” Moshalli had bubbled, embracing her. Her excitement was genuine, Velirith decided, if not a bit exaggerated. Moshalli liked associating with those considered influential. Being able to say that she used to play Heroes and Kovars with the only heir of the house of Vel and that they were “best friends” elevated her status—at least in her own eyes. Velirith invited her playmate of youth over to the window.

  Velirith smiled at her. “Good to see you too, Moshalli.” And it was, even if Velirith was a bit annoyed to have her creativity interrupted. She looked into the round, plain face of her friend. The eye make-up was new and Velirith saw that Moshalli was going for a more exotic look.

  “It’s been, what, two years? Last year’s party I think you were sick?”

  Velirith laughed. “No, I was just stubbornly immature and refused to go. The rumor was I was sick, but I’m sure you knew better.”

  “Well, I had heard you and Velator had a fight about it.”

  “Amazing,” Velirith shook her head. “My father and I did have words about it, but we were the only ones in the room. You certainly keep well informed.”

  Moshalli beamed. “We MgFellis’ are at the center of everything. We are trusted to be discreet and yet sometimes, if our family didn’t know what was happening, nothing would ever get done!”

  Velirith regarded her talkative friend and agreed there was a good deal of truth in what she said. Moshalli, however, played it up.

  “Like now,” Moshalli continued with a melodramatic sigh, pulling a sheaf of papers out of a small satchel. “You know my mother is the events coordinator for the Executive Chair. She assigned me to order the dancers for the Family Harmony Dance. My stars, Velirith! Do you realize how difficult this is? How important?” Moshalli’s mother, Fechua, was not one to overlook her daughter’s social training.

  Eyes wide with amused concern, Velirith shook her head slightly.

  “Well, think of it! What if Forcheso Parchiki were accidentally paired with Feleanna Cortatti, who everyone knows is trying to bring down his fabric trade by having that awful Sindia Corch intercept his cloth shipments? Or if I accidently paired Feleanna with this mysterious Ortessi heir, who was supposed to be dead and now shows up twenty years later? Could you imagine the consequences?”

  Imagine. Velirith had actually put her mind to work visualizing the scene. Feleanna was a wicked witch with way too many years and ambitions left in her. If she were paired with a leader of a house she was currently trying to eliminate, the result would be dramatic, if not explosive. It could make the whole event worthwhile, Velirith thought.

  “Or imagine the Executive Chair himself, dancing majestically around the outer circle and ending up with Balfani Telander, that big woman married to the prime of the power plant house? After the faked magal shortage was exposed, they hate each other!”

  Velirith felt the excitement of a new idea coming on. “How do you arrange the dance so that no one is paired with someone they don’t get along with?”

  “Well, the dance represents social order, families caring for each other—“

  Velirith let out a snort of laughter.

  “What?”

  Between spasms of laughter, Velirith managed to get out, “Come on, Moshalli! You just told me how much everybody hates each other. You don’t see the irony of a dance that symbolizes families ‘taking care of each other’?”

  By her frown, Moshalli evidently hadn’t looked past the tradition to see the reality. “In the old days, the groups were completely random. They would just dance with whoever they ended up with. Now we are more careful.”

  Calming herself, Velirith said, “Go on. Please.”

  “Well, it’s also called the Mystery Partner Dance. You’ve seen it, but this is the first year you can actually dance in it, now that your father has declared you heir-apparent of house Vel. You know the men are in the outer circle and the women in the inner circle. The two circles move opposite each other, everyone switching partners until a third of the way through the music. Then the music changes, the circles stop rotating, and they dance with that partner for the rest of the song. That way the new partners can talk and get to know each other better.”

  Controlling her rising excitement, Velirith pictured what a fouled dance plan could produce in this time when families were anything but caring.

  Ignorant of Velirith’s inner humor, Moshalli went on. “The hard part is sorting out who hates who. Once that is figured out, it’s actually easier than you think to keep feuding families apart. There are two groups of dancers that never mix; my mother just puts rivals in separate groups. Like Feleanna will be in group ‘A’ and both Forcheso Parchiki and the Ortessi mystery man will be in group ‘B’. They’ll never get paired together.”

  “How does that work?” asked Velirith, suddenly curious.

  “Look.” And Moshalli explained, placing a sheet of paper with diagrams on top of Velirith’s script. The outer and inner circle consisted of about forty dancers each, but as they counter-rotated, Velirith saw how they skipped a person after each short dance interaction, creating the two groups, odds and evens, or “A”s and “B”s. As long as the groups were equal in number, everyone would always end up partnered with someone from their own group. Though simple, it was an elegant, beautiful dance, Velirith admitted, and very old, dating back to when Velik himself had united the diverse tribes living all over the three continents.

  But she also saw, more by intuition, that if either circle lost a single dancer or a couple from the same group, group ‘A’ dancers would be forced to partner with group ‘B’ dancers. She also noticed the pattern was mathematical. If a specific dancer was taken out at the right time, a preset arrangement of the dancers that looked random could actually be arranged to partner specific dancers with an exact predetermined match.

  One sheet of the diagram held blank circles that were to be filled in with dancers’ names.

  “Moshalli,” Velirith asked suddenly, as the patterns of the dance began to come together, “May I help you fill in the names?”

  Moshalli was thrilled. “That would help a lot! Sure! It shouldn’t be too hard since mother already separated the groups so there won’t be any conflicts. We just have to make sure that every other spot around the circle is filled with a group ‘A’ dancer and that they are across from another group ‘A’ dancer.”

  Her mind racing, Velirith dictated the names to Moshalli who wrote them into the blanks. Spinning the circles in her head, Velirith figured out just who would be paired with whom. And, more critical to her mischief, she figured just which dancers needed to be taken out to alter the results of the “random” dance.

  Giggling for different reasons, the girls had a delightful time. Moshalli was in her element, gossiping and seemingly planning this important event. Every tidbit of gossip, Velirith turned into a dance couple, appearing to rearrange at random the names Moshalli blithely tossed out.

  “So Callia and Ferdando used to be this hot couple, but when neither Ferdando nor Callia were willing to go over to the opposite family in marriage, you can bet the elements heated up! If I were Callia, I mean, she’s so pretty and has some of the most elegant dresses, I would never let a man as handsome as that Ferdando get away.”

  “That’s incredible, Moshalli. The stupid things people do. Let’s move Ferdando over to this circle on the opposite side of Callia. It’s still in his same group.”

  “Okay.” And Moshalli penned it in.

  Of course, with the rotation of the circles, and one couple dropping out at just the right (or wrong) time… Velirith paused and looked over at her friend
. This dance was important to Moshalli, too important. She didn’t seem to realize how superficial all this was, and that she was looking up to these puffed-up frauds as heroes, people she wanted to impress. If Velirith could show her how ugly these personalities really were, Moshalli might see that her own qualities, her enthusiasm and sweetness, were actually more authentic and noble than the false fronts of the people she looked up to.

  It might hurt her a little to see the dance she cared about go awry, but in the long run, she further justified, Moshalli’s self-esteem could really be elevated. And this will look completely accidental! Moshalli can’t be blamed.

  At the end, Moshalli packed up her papers. “I have to get these to the printers. Then I’m to hand-deliver to each family their copy of which position they will start in. It’s going to be so exciting!”

  “No doubt,” Velirith agreed.

  “Did you know some of the dancers practice all year just so this dance works perfectly?”

  “Really?”

  Moshalli nodded vigorously. “You probably don’t have to because of your theater experience, but it’s true. Oh, I wish our family was recognized for how important we really are. Then I could dance and be swept around the floor by some handsome mystery man. This New Year’s Eve will be glorious!”

  After Moshalli had left on the private tram that spanned the familial towers, Velirith had sat at her window feverishly writing out the pairings she had arranged. Then she had forged notes from one partner to the other, marveling at how devious her own mind could be.

  Now, with the dance beginning in just a couple hours, Velirith would execute her plans at the Executive Chair’s New Year’s gala. The voice of Discernment in her head seemed to whisper that what she had planned was wrong. But the louder voice of Mischief danced and laughed that this was just what the Omeron needed, a little dramatic revelation of the hypocrisy played out in a Family Harmony Dance. Velirith intentionally chose Mischief and opened her eyes just as a knock at the door pulled her from the replay of Moshalli’s visit.

  “Velirith, your father says it’s time.”

  “Thank you Anessa. Tell him that I am on my way.” Anessa was not only her bodyguard, but a close friend as well.

  Velirith adjusted the collar on her outfit and gently arranged the stack of fake notes in her satchel of woven silver. She hung the bag over her right shoulder and patted it with excitement. Adding spike to the punch, she thought.

  She took a last look in the mirror, practiced her best look of pure childish innocence, and headed to the private tram to meet her father and go to the gala.

  Chapter Six

  Kieler swore in his head, but his face remained impassive, even nonchalant.

  The last agent slid onto the tram as the begrimed bronze doors slid closed with a heavy thump. Both the doors and the agent impressed him as being old without showing it properly. The doors were artfully and sturdily built, at least a couple hundred years ago. Three layers of bronze trim arched gracefully over the portal, strong and solid but tarnished with time.

  While casually pretending to look at the tram doors, Kieler peripherally studied the remaining agent. Kieler couldn’t pinpoint why the man struck him as old. His face was youthfully unlined. Physically, the man was below average height, dark haired, and had a pale, smooth complexion. Perhaps the larger nose and ears, despite his clear complexion, made him look like an older man. And his eyes, while not rheumy, were dull, as if the light in them had waned.

  The tram climbed slowly, rising from the Glums toward the brighter, higher level of Plaza Floraneva. These trams were built with a tasteful elegance in an era when efficiency wasn’t defined by cutting back on materials or energy usage. The vehicles were beautifully designed, monstrous and enduring. Once Kieler was done redesigning the government, the engineer in him would love to streamline these trams. It was said of the ancient vehicles, “They were proof that with enough magal, even a mountain can fly.” Since House Ek’s rise to power some eighty years ago, the aphorism was irreverently edited to “with enough magal, Ek can move mountains.”

  But this man shadowing him did not work for Ek, Kieler was intuitively sure. Probably Cortatti. But how did he know which gate Kieler would use? Chance?

  Lumbering up the track, the tram approached the underside of Plaza Floraneva. The Plaza’s tram station encircled one of the ancient pillars that supported the plaza itself and the upper levels of the city. In the Glums, these pillars were either covered with grime or, near Plate level, covered with tenements and shabby businesses like The Bottom of the Barrel.

  Several packed trams approached and departed, spiraling in and away from the station. The tracks hung suspended from the column like curving branches from a tree trunk. This was one of the busiest hubs in the city.

  Consciously relaxing his jaw muscles, Kieler thought about how he was going to lose his uninvited companion.

  Something else made the man seem older too. He didn’t move enough. He just stood there, not looking around. If he was pretending disinterest in Kieler, he was expert at it.

  The tram slowed as it sidled up to a curved platform ringing the spire. When the doors opened, the man got off first and moved a few feet onto the platform and stopped to wait for his charge. Kieler considered just staying on and letting the tram take him to the next station farther west, then doubling back. But he needed to climb the Grand Stair from Plaza Floraneva northeast to Garrist Ring. So pretending to go on would just waste time. If he hadn’t needed to get the sigil last night, he would have camped on top of the Charlaise building and waited for the proper time to hop over to the party. But now, he had to get there before full dark.

  His tail was just standing there, completely at ease it seemed, as if he knew Kieler would be coming along and he needn’t be worried. It was a little unnerving. Was this guy that good? Maybe choosing such a well-known gate from the undercity was a bad call. Perhaps the Cortattis put their best man on it. The guy was sure to tip off a swarm of Cortatti thugs once they got higher and closer to the palace. Kieler had to lose him now.

  The platform was jammed with partygoers. Two more crowded trams pulled up to adjacent platforms and unloaded as Kieler disembarked and suddenly he saw a way.

  Inelegant, he thought, but effective.

  As the throng from the other trams moved toward the exits and pressed around him, Kieler waited until the flow of traffic had put several bodies between him and his tail and then, in a moment where two taller men blocked line of sight, he dropped down to all fours and crawled.

  He wound his way through the legs of the crowd over to another tram waiting with its doors open and scuttled onto it, keeping his head below the window level. The empty tram seemed to be waiting for a set departure time, which was fortunate.

  After half a minute, Kieler poked an eye up from behind a seat and looked across the platform. Most of the current wave of people had passed and his stoic tail was easy to spot, standing, halfway up the stairs, looking down and around the momentarily less busy platform. Kieler imagined the man shrugging, thought he saw the agent smirk, then turned and continued dispassionately up the stairs.

  There were other exits from the platforms up through the hub to Plaza Floraneva and Kieler found one. He climbed stairs through the interior of the black tower. The line of station doors emptied onto the center of the west side of the triangular plaza. Kieler hovered around the northernmost door and looked across the other station doors and east over the plaza. There was no sign of his enigmatic shadow.

  Just to be sure, he climbed to the second tier of shops, found a quiet alcove and scouted the plaza below. Plaza Floraneva was jammed with people. In the corners of the triangular plaza were monumental buildings constructed when Avertori was in its prime, flourishing both culturally and economically. All three structures were of such architectural magnificence that it was a marvel of complacency how well the throngs of partiers could ignore them.

  South, and to his right, was the seldom-used the
ater, the Oraflora, named by the house he would be assuming leadership of this evening, House Ortessi.

  The Oraflora was open tonight. Run by the Cortattis, who had taken it over when the babe Orlazrus Ortessi went missing (presumed burned to death), the once famous playhouse was now infamous. Anyone older than the takeover assumed the Cortattis were purposely discrediting the usurped property. The play tonight was “The War Tribes of Ardan”. Where once House Ortessi had accurately dramatized historical events, the Cortatti plays tended to butcher history—with the emphasis on butchery.

  The theater itself still presented a dramatic façade; its three vertical marquees stretched skyward with luzhril spotlights already ablaze. When the sun went fully down, the bold marquees would cast stark shadows into the sky, contrasting the brilliantly lit marquees with the darkness beyond. But the performance itself would be little attended, Kieler knew.

  Even less attended, in fact, deserted, would be the edifice directly across the tri from him in the southeast corner, the cathedral. Kieler didn’t know much of its original purpose—Movus hadn’t taught him anything about it—but of the three corner buildings, it was the most magnificent. Ornate, double flying buttresses adorned each of the six corners of the structure, each buttress and the corner itself topped with escalating towers, eighteen in all. A latticework dome topped the main nave and glittered with oranges and reds as the setting sun refracted through the crystalline panels.

  It had been sealed off for as long as Kieler had known. One day, he would like to see the inside.

  The final structure, burgeoning with people, was the Arena to his left. House Cortatti ran this place too, but in contrast to Oraflora, they ran the Arena extremely well—from a business perspective. Originally, it was a place of sporting contests for feats of might and strategy, built in the same century as its two companion structures in opposite corners of the Plaza.

  Contests were still held there, but losers left dead and winners only lived to fight again. Supposedly only violent criminals sentenced to death ended up in the Arena. But Kieler knew better.