Rock of Ages

by Walter Jon Williams

  On those occasions Kuusinen had actually been of great assistance to Maijstral, but the very sight of the man made Maijstral uneasy. Call it ingratitude if you will.

  “What brings you to Earth?” Maijstral asked.

  “I’m still her grace’s attorney, of course,” Kuusinen said, “and she is here, as a guest.”

  “Roberta?” Maijstral said. “Here?”

  “Indeed.”

  Roberta Altunin, the Duchess of Benn, was a famous amateur racer and the former owner of the Eltdown Shard, the fabulous gem which Maijstral had once had the pleasure and glory of stealing.

  “Curious,” Maijstral said, “that the Prince never mentioned she was here.”

  “You’ll meet at supper at any case.”

  “Yes. I will. Your servant.”

  “And yours.”

  They sniffed ears again and parted, Maijstral frowning. He’d come to think of Kuusinen as a creature of omen—not necessarily ill omen, since after all the man had been of service—but at least a harbinger of unsettling times.

  Once in his suite, Maijstral settled his unease by watching a Western till it was time to dress. This one, The Long Night of Billy the Kid, was an old-fashioned tragedy featuring the legendary rivalry between Billy and Elvis Presley for the affections of Katie Elder. Katie’s heart belonged to Billy, but despite her tearful pleadings Billy rode the outlaw trail; and finally, brokenhearted Katie left Billy to go on tour with Elvis as a backup singer, while Billy rode on to his long-foreshadowed death at the hands of the greenhorn inventor-turned-lawman Nikola Tesla.

  It was wonderful. Maijstral, transfixed by the ancient, fateful myth being brought to life, watched with an aching heart as the awesome story unfolded in its somber, tragic perfection.

  And while he watched, he paid particular attention to the horses.

  He was really looking forward to lessons.

  *

  Paavo Kuusinen, after leaving Maijstral in the hall, turned a corner and began counting doors. He counted the light fixtures and power outlets as well, but only because he was compulsive that way—counting the doors really had purpose.

  When he came to the eighth door, he knocked. A servant opened the door and he entered.

  “Your grace,” he said.

  The Duchess of Benn was a tall, graceful woman, eighteen years old, with short red hair and intense violet eyes. She held out a hand and Kuusinen took it, sniffed the wrist.

  “Maijstral’s arrived?” she asked.

  “An hour ago or thereabouts.”

  “Good. And the, ah—the package?”

  “It will be in place by tomorrow evening.”

  “Splendid. The Special Event goes forward.” She smiled. “I will look forward to enjoying Maijstral’s surprise.”

  Kuusinen bowed again. “As shall I, your grace. To be sure.

  CHAPTER THREE

  His heart still brimming with the glory and tragedy of his Western, Maijstral glided down the balcony to join the others in the drawing room. Before making his entrance, he absently patted one of the hidden pockets in his jacket to make certain the stacked deck of cards was in its nesting place.

  He had also prepared his ground by having Roman bribe one of the footmen serving dinner tonight. It was nothing, he reflected, that Houdini hadn’t done.

  Maijstral stepped into the drawing room. The Prince’s string quartet played Haydn in one corner—among them Maijstral recognized Will, the Bubber, who puffed out his cheeks as he sawed away on his cello and stared intently at the music. The regular cellist, he observed, was standing out, absently fingering his own instrument in a corner of the room.

  Standing with her back toward Maijstral was Roberta, the Duchess of Benn. She was speaking to an elderly Khosalikh female who stood shorter than Maijstral, which made her a miniature by Khosalikh standards. Roberta’s gown was cut quite low in back and Maijstral approached slowly, the better able to appreciate the curve of Roberta’s supple spine, the play of shadows beneath her scapulae.

  “Your grace,” he said, speaking in Khosali Standard.

  Roberta gave a start, a larger one than Maijstral’s usual silent approaches generally warranted. Maijstral confirmed an old suspicion that her grace of Benn was perhaps a bit too tightly wound.

  “You startled me,” she gasped, which was, Maijstral reflected, not only a fairly redundant remark for someone who’s just jumped half a foot, but was what people always said in these situations.

  “My apologies,” Maijstral said. “I’m light-footed by profession, and sometimes I forget that I should shuffle a bit or clear my throat.” Which is, more or less, what he always said in these situations.

  Maijstral offered three fingers in handclasp—having once stolen her jewelry permitted him a certain intimacy—and was given three in return. They approached one another and sniffed one another’s ears, and then Maijstral sniffed Roberta’s wrist. The odor of Roberta’s perfume sent a shimmer of pleasure up Maijstral’s spine, something that caused him to reflect that the custom of shaking hands—recently revived by the Constellation Practices Authority as a “natural, human custom” to replace the refined ear-sniffing of the Khosali Empire—had a long way to travel before it could replace the voluptuous pleasure of approaching a beautiful woman’s pulsing throat and taking a glorious whiff.

  “It’s an unexpected pleasure to see you,” Maijstral said. “I ran into your Mr. Kuusinen, who informed me you were here.”

  “Allow me to introduce my Aunt Bathsheba,” Roberta said. “She’s my favorite member of the family. We call her Batty.”

  “Your servant,” Maijstral said. Aunt Batty’s soft dark fur was thinned with age, and she’d perched a pair of spectacles on her muzzle. Lace hung from her pointed ears.

  Maijstral was too familiar with the genealogies of aristocratic Imperial families, with their sibs-by-adoption and cousins-german and morganatic marriages and fostering-patterns, to wonder how a human duchess managed to have a Khosali aunt. He sniffed Aunt Batty’s ears and offered her two fingers in handclasp, and she returned him three.

  “Forgive the intimacy,” she said, “but I feel as if I know you quite well. I’m writing a multivolume work about you, you see.”

  Maijstral blinked. He didn’t know whether to believe this remark, or, if believed, to take it seriously.

  “Are you indeed?” he managed.

  “Two volumes so far. The first was rather twee, I think in retrospect, but the style of the second settled down nicely, so I have hopes for the third.”

  Maijstral sighed. Any number of hack biographies had appeared since he’d been ranked first in the burglar standings, and most were filled with a glittering scintillation of errors, some of which he’d cheerfully supplied himself.

  “I hardly think myself worthy of the attention,” he said.

  “On the contrary,” Batty said. “I’ve found you quite an interesting character, well worth the study. Of course I’ve had to make a few guesses concerning things not on the public record. And now that I’ve met you, I’ll be most interested to discover whether my surmises are anywhere near the mark.”

  Maijstral laughed uncomfortably. “I hope I won’t disappoint you.”

  “I’m sure you won’t, however it turns out. Unlike so many of my species, I’m almost never disappointed in humans—even when someone does something that I can’t entirely approve of, it’s always for the most interesting reasons.”

  Maijstral was at a loss for a response to this. He couldn’t tell whether she disapproved of him already, or planned to disapprove in the future, or if the remark wasn’t directed to him at all, but rather to the general run of her biographical victims. . . . So he said the only thing available to him, which was, “Ah.”

  “And there are so many people here who have known you,” Batty went on, “Roberta, of course, and the Prince, who knew you at school. And Mr. Kuusinen—well, he’s a first-class observer, and I’ve already spoken to him.”

  Maijstral felt a c
hill of alarm at the mention of Kuusinen’s name. The man was far too first-class an observer. There were certain things he hoped Kuusinen never guessed at—there was a little service he’d done the Empire, for one, that could get him killed if certain parties in the Human Constellation ever discovered it.

  “Perhaps I could answer some of your questions,” he said, “and spare you the trouble of researching me through acquaintances.”

  “That’s very kind,” Batty said, “but it’s not my method. I do all the research first, then speak to the subject last.”

  Speak to the subject, Maijstral thought. He wondered if corner the victim might be more appropriate.

  The Haydn quartet drew to a close, the Bubber sawing away with evident enjoyment. There was scattered applause, and then the sound of the dinner gong. With relief, Maijstral bowed toward Roberta.

  “May I take you in to dinner?”

  “I believe Will is taking me in,” Roberta smiled. “But you may take in Aunt Batty, if you like.”

  “A pleasure,” Maijstral said, and felt rather like the condemned man taking a stroll with his executioner.

  Loud hosannas began to sound as Maijstral and Batty entered the dining room. Startled, Maijstral looked up to discover a music loft above the door, with an entire choir singing away.

  “I’d no idea we were going to be so honored,” Maijstral said. “A chorus and a quartet.”

  “Oh,” Batty said, a bit offhand, “we hear this every night. His highness supports a full complement of musicians and singers.”

  That, Maijstral reflected, was where adroit politics would get you. Joseph Bob’s family had gained their initial wealth and tide through energetic support of the Khosali Empire; and their riches and renown had only increased in the last few generations, since they’d been early and distinguished supporters of the Great Rebellion.

  Once Maijstral’s family had commanded wealth and station nearly equal to that of the Princes of Tejas. Unfortunately Maijstral’s grandfather had been a far more fanatic supporter of the Khosali Empire even than most Khosali, and the family fortune had waned along with the fortunes of the Empire. Until a few years ago Maijstral had spent his life scurrying from one hideaway to another, the bill collectors just behind.

  Fortunately burglary, once you reached Maijstral’s level, paid well. And now that Maijstral had signed a number of endorsement contracts, it looked as if he’d never lack for funds again.

  Maijstral helped Aunt Batty to her chair and sat in his own, between Batty and Roberta, half-expecting at any second to hear the crash of doors and the tramp of jackboots as Colonel-General Vandergilt marched in with a warrant for his arrest for some crime he had neither committed nor even heard of. But nothing happened, so he turned to the Bubber, seated on the other side of Roberta, and said, “Perhaps, in thanks for your music, I might offer a little amusement of my own. Perhaps you could send a footman for a deck of cards.”

  *

  Card tricks alternated with supper courses. Maijstral thought he performed well, though the sight of Roberta’s bare shoulders next to him was a constant, if perfectly agreeable, distraction.

  Maijstral squared his cards and paused in his patter while the dessert course was brought in—Tuscan-style leaping clouds, light and frothy, with warm jugs of coffee liqueur sauce. The Bubber poured sauce on his dessert and picked up his spoon.

  “If you’ll pardon me, your grace,” Maijstral said, rose in his chair, and reached across Roberta’s plate to plunge his fingers into the Bubber’s dessert. Princess Arlette gasped. The Bubber seemed at a loss for a response. “Would this be your card?” Maijstral asked, and raised the three of crowns from the Bubber’s plate. Little dessert-cloudlets rained from the card, but it was perfectly recognizable.

  “Yes!” the Bubber gasped.

  “Another dessert, if you please,” Maijstral told the footman. “And another deck of cards—this one is soiled.” He showed the card to the others, and there was a round of applause, feet tapping the floor in the pattern for “surprise and appreciation.”

  Maijstral wiped his fingers and the card with his napkin and left the card face-up on the table, a reminder of his prowess. He always possessed a certain sense of wonder himself at how the simplest effects produced the greatest reaction—the others assumed he’d performed some master sleight right in front of the Bubber’s nose, whereas in fact he’d merely had Roman bribe the footman to put a prearranged card in the Bubber’s dessert. Any actual skill lay in getting the Bubber to choose the three of crowns in the first place, but that was a fairly elementary “force,” as the jargon had it, and hardly a challenge.

  He’d worked for years on much more sophisticated tricks that never made such an impression.

  He turned to Roberta. “My apologies, once more, your grace, for reaching across you so rudely.”

  “You are entirely forgiven,” Roberta said. There was a glow in her violet eyes.

  “Still, by way of apology, I’d like to offer to perform a trick where you, not I, are in command. As soon as they clear away the last course.”

  She smiled. “One dessert on top of another, it would seem. I’ll strive not to bolt the first so as to get to the other quicker.”

  “Let the first add savor to the second, your grace.”

  Roberta gave him a graceful nod. “You are a master saucier, Maijstral. I shall trust your taste in dessert courses.”

  After the last of the dishes were cleared away, Maijstral broke the seal on the new deck and shuffled it. It was a matter of little moment to switch the new deck for the deck of identical pattern that he’d been carrying in his pocket.

  “Your grace,” Maijstral said, “I would like, by way of example, to deal each of us a hand of court-imago.”

  “I thought you said I was to be in charge,” Roberta said.

  “But I want you to know why you shall be in charge, and to that end—six cards, so.”

  The cards sped across the table. Joseph Bob and Arlette leaned forward in their chairs to peer at the action. Kuusinen watched with an expressionless face and an intense narrowing of the eyes.

  Roberta picked up her hand and sorted the cards.

  “Is it a passable hand, your grace?”

  “I would wager on it, were I playing court-imago.”

  “Please lay it down.” It was a Little Prough. Maijstral turned his own cards over, showing a Big Prough.

  “I win,” he said. “But it was unfair, was it not?”.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you dealt the cards, and you are a card manipulator.”

  “True. Therefore, it would give you more of a chance if I were to shuffle, and you were to cut the cards, yes?”

  Roberta considered this. “I suppose,” she said.

  Maijstral reinserted the used cards into the deck, seemingly at random (but not randomly at all), and shuffled the deck with a theatrical flourish that served artfully to disguise the fact that the order of the cards was not altered in any way whatever. He placed the cards on the table.

  “Cut, if you please.”

  The Duchess obliged. Maijstral dealt her four tens and himself four princesses.

  “Was that fair?” he asked.

  “I think not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” Her eyes narrowed as she considered the possibilities, “you could have nullified the cut in some way. Or somehow forced me to cut where you wanted me to.”

  Maijstral smiled. “Very good, your grace. I could have done both, had I wanted.” He swept up the cards and put them in his deck. “This time I will shuffle the cards, and then you will shuffle the cards. I will deal a hand to everyone here, and you may choose the best of them to go up against my hand.”

  The cards were shuffled and dealt. The others at the table compared hands, and Arlette’s crown stairway was chosen as the best. “I’m afraid that isn’t good enough,” Maijstral said, and turned over his own hand, six major powers in
a row, a full council.

  Roberta’s ears flattened. “You promised that I would be in charge, Maijstral. All I have been doing is following your lead.”

  “That is true,” Maijstral said. “I’ve been most unfair—because it was I who dealt the cards, and I’m a card manipulator and might have arranged somehow to have the best hand.” He pushed the deck toward Roberta. “Therefore, this time, you shuffle, you deal a hand to everyone here, you choose which of the other hands to match against mine. And we shall see what occurs.”

  Roberta smiled at the challenge, and reached for the cards. She shuffled and dealt. This time a pair of princesses was the best anyone could manage. Roberts gave Maijstral an apologetic look.

  “Not very good, I’m afraid.”

  “No. I’m afraid not.” Maijstral turned over his own cards, a full court from the rover to the emperor of ships, the highest possible hand in court-imago.

  The Bubber, baffled, looked through his cards, then took the deck and fingered his way through it.

  “It seems,” Roberta said, “that I haven’t been in charge at all.”

  Maijstral fingered his diamond ring. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “My character, alas, is fatally flawed—I’m a liar. And a cheat. And, of course,” he added, with an apologetic smile, “I steal.”

  Roberta gave a smile. “I believe I am personally acquainted with that last facet of your character, somewhat to my cost.”

  The Bubber took Maijstral’s cards and looked at them in hopes of finding some clue to the mystery. “Maijstral,” he said, “how did you do it?”

  Maijstral’s eyes gleamed beneath their lazy lids. “With great skill and a mischievous if refined sense of diablerie,” he said. He reached for his glass of wine. “Perhaps we should let the servants clear the table.”

  The company adjourned for brandy, coffee, and tobacco to the Colt Drawing Room, named after the antique firearms that Joseph Bob collected, and which were displayed in artistic array on the wall. One weapon, however, was under glass in a display case. “The first Colt revolving chugger,” Joseph Bob said.