Kordas was a third of the way into his tea, and could only murmur “Um . . .”
Star continued. “Those who are in possession of a talisman to return home—and most of them are—will flee to their homes and the comfort of their homes. The ones who are not will be useless burdens on the Emperor’s Guard corps and the few human servants. You have heard the Emperor speak. He is not a man much given to thought. He can order members of the Guard or the human servants to do many things—but if they cannot do them, these things will not be accomplished.” Star paused. “It is the opinion of the Record Keeper that before he thinks of anything else, the Emperor will see to his own comfort. He will recall those who used to serve here from the legions, weakening them ever so slightly—but more importantly, throwing them into some disarray. He will demand more servants from his nobles. All this will take time. The pellet-machines will have fallen silent. No more pellets will be sent to the southern war, and it will further slow to a halt. By the time there are humans minding the machines, some of them will have shaken apart. There may be explosions. No one knows how to mend the machines. The war is more important in the Emperor’s mind than anything else. By the time he turns his attention to the ‘who’ behind the disappearance of the Dolls, the trail we left will be cold, and evidence will vanish too. It may appear that you simply disappeared along with all the other nobles—after all, you have been clamoring to do so. It may be thought that the hostages decided to leave in the confusion as well.”
“I don’t want to keep the child hostages, I just want them to be forever out of—there. None of this is certain—” Kordas said, hesitantly.
“And none of it is impossible,” Star pointed out, and he suddenly got the impression that a great many of the Dolls had focused their attention on him.
There was a long silence.
Kordas finished the tea, handing the cup over to the awaiting Rose, and spoke to all of the Dolls through Star. “I just realized—I’m not sure I’ve explained to all of you why I hate this place. I want—it isn’t revenge on this City, it’s more like—I’m inside a hulking, poisoned, rotting monster that isn’t even aware it’s destroying itself with every footstep, it just keeps plodding along, causing misery and eating misery, instead of being put down in mercy. It feels like leaving it alive is an act of cruelty.” He rubbed at his temples. “Do you know what they’ve given up here, in the Palace? In the City? They’ve given up empathy. They’ve given up sentiment, fond thoughts of the little things that make life worth living, that make it special and wondrous and joyful.”
Kordas leaned in earnestly to Star, trying to pour his feelings out after so much tension. “Here at the Palace, everyone is well fed, and they gossip, and they present themselves as ‘acceptable’—but they’re joyless and without quirks, all the time, because those quirks could be questioned along with their loyalty. I’m the only one who sits at the tables and talks about things that I love that aren’t pointedly to the Empire’s benefit. I’m the only one who just talks about what they like. Everyone else—maneuvers. They keep what they love, and how they love it, hidden away so no one above them in rank can use it against them.”
He stood up to gesture more freely, and showed the back of his Ducal Crest. “This thing—the charm that I was given to protect my thoughts. It’s helped me survive here, in a way that they probably didn’t intend. I think into it, about Valdemar. About what I love about Valdemar. And then, sometimes, I imagine Valdemar as I’ve described it to you, becoming like this place. The quirks we love could be interpreted as seditious. Something like playing a war game on a table and having the Empire lose might be interpreted by a scrying mage as a sign of incipient revolt. The order comes from on high that the games are illegal now. Punishable. The inspiration of musicians and poets could be blunted by decree. The courting rituals we laugh over could be shut down because they are inefficient.” He picked at the loose paint and plaster around the window. “When a ruler gives up on empathy and sentiment, it is a sign of desperation. It means they’re paring away emotion in favor of efficiency and numbers and a twisted fantasy of a better life without the joys and burdens of caring about something outside of themselves. Contempt for kindness and generosity is the surest sign there is that someone has nothing else left to them but a horrible emptiness much worse than weakness. It’s an—anti-strength. And the dying monster plods along, unaware it’s rotting.”
Kordas faced Star fully again. “No one lives forever, but—in a very real way, everyone in that Court but me is already dead. It’s just a matter of degrees of dead. And I’m their fool, mocked for actually feeling. I amuse them with my trite and naive love of things. They see my talk as a display of an idiot’s weakness. But I’m more alive than all of them. That’s why we have to get our people out of here. Out of the Empire, your people and mine. I don’t say it lightly that, if it is a decision between what this system would make of us, and living with joy—the Empire will die before I let them take our loves from us.”
“And this,” said Rose, “is why we will follow you, even into doom.”
18
“So . . . you’re a Doll,” Isla said, uncertainly. “Do you have a name?”
The Doll had popped out of the front door of a barge that had come through the Gate this morning, scaring the hell out of the people who were steering barges into position to be linked into a string. Delia hadn’t blamed them. The thing was utterly uncanny, a human-sized jointed canvas contraption with only a hint of features that walked . . . and talked. And even worse, so far as everyone else was concerned, as soon as it had emerged from the hatch, it had ripped off the Imperial tabard it wore and tossed it violently overboard, leaving a completely naked human-shaped canvas contraption that walked and talked. Somehow a completely naked thing was much more disturbing than one partially clothed.
Maybe because we can kind of see it as an enlarged toy when it’s clothed, or something like a scarecrow, but when it’s just . . . there . . . it’s harder to accept?
Thank the gods, Ponu had sprung up from out of nowhere, taken the Doll under his skinny wing, directed the others where to moor the barge it had come in on, and gotten clothing for it. He must have raided his own stores, or those of his fellow Circle members, because now it wore loose linen trews, an equally loose linen shirt tied at the waist with a cloth sash—and a straw hat. Delia wasn’t sure why, but the clothing somehow made it look less unsettling, and that hat made it funny rather than threatening.
“This one has no name,” the Doll said, in a pleasant whisper.
“Hold still,” said Koto, coming up from behind Delia. He had a bottle of sepia ink and a feather, and with a few deft strokes with the tip of the feather, sketched in features that suggested something harmless and childlike. That made it less unsettling too. Then he stuck the feather in the band of the straw hat. “I’m calling you Feather. Do you like that name, Feather?”
“I—think I do. It has conceptual notes of lightness, aspirations, and transience,” Feather answered. Koto capped the ink, nodded to Isla, and left, going back to whatever he had been doing before he decided to give the Doll a face.
“Kordas said that what one of you knows, all of you know,” Isla continued. “Is that still true?”
“Yes, Lady Isla,” Feather replied.
Isla gave a little crow of glee. “Do you know what this means?” she said. “It means we won’t have to risk scrying anymore!”
Feather went very quiet for a moment. “This . . . is truth,” it whispered. “You need only tell this one what you wish Kordas to know. Kordas need only tell Star or Rose or Clover what he wishes you to know.” It paused. “This one can tell you that what concerns Kordas the most, at the moment, is the repercussions that will fall on those left behind in Valdemar if they refuse to come to the refuge.”
“Well,” Ponu said after a moment of thought. “I think I have an idea. But it’s going to take a hell of a
lot of power. Still! We can siphon off a fair bit from the power nexus here, and put it into storage crystals, and do it.”
“Do what?” Isla asked sharply.
“Wipe everyone’s memory,” Ponu replied. “It’s a crude spell, but effective. Take away their knowledge of the Plan and how we all left. It’ll leave holes in their memories, and that’ll disturb them all, but the Emperor’s inquisitors can’t find what isn’t there.”
Isla looked appalled. Delia felt as appalled as Isla looked.
Ponu looked from Isla to Delia and back, and snorted. “So what’s better? Lose your memory or lose your life? The Emperor’s mages will find the residuum from a spell that big all over the Duchy, and there won’t be any question that those of us who left forced it on them.”
“We need a better idea than that,” Isla said flatly. “I won’t allow it. And besides, won’t that just point the finger directly at those of us who left? And then they’ll have even more reason to try and hunt us down.”
“They’ll already have all the reasons they want to hunt us down.” Ponu shrugged. “You’re the leader here. Maybe we can think of something else. Probably we can keep them from finding our refuge here. And if we can’t think of anything else, well, you and the Duke will share responsibility for hanging the ones left behind out to dry.” And he turned on his heel and walked away.
“You’d better!” Isla shouted after him. “You’d better think of something!”
He raised his hand in a rude gesture.
“It’s not Ponu’s responsibility to come up with a ‘better’ idea,” Delia observed, earning her a glare from her older sister.
“Please come with me, Feather,” Isla said, rather than answering Delia. “I would like to find out exactly what is going on with Kordas.” And she led the Doll away—which had the immediate effect of making nearly everyone else who had been near it relax again.
Valdemarans just aren’t used to seeing that much magic, Delia thought. Much less something as powerful and uncanny as animating a cloth doll.
Which makes me wonder how they are going to react when hundreds of those things start showing up.
Well, it wasn’t as if they were threatening in any way. And they certainly could be helpful. They wouldn’t need to eat or sleep, and at the very least, they could probably serve as night guards, which would free up a lot of people to work in the daytime. Of course, eventually they’d have to be freed of their imprisoning bodies, because Kordas had promised that, but until the mages figured out how to do that, they would be awfully helpful.
As she stared off after Isla, who seemed merely to be heading for a spot that was still near the Gate—after all, she had to get back to Valdemar to continue the charade of her “affair” with Hakkon—Koto spoke behind her, making her jump.
“Some things you just have to let go, and leave to chance,” he said.
“Yes, but—” she began.
“The people we are leaving behind are either those who are completely out of the Plan because we cannot trust them, or people who know what they are getting themselves into, because they have been repeatedly told,” Koto continued.
“Yes, but—”
“They are responsible for their own actions, too,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but—”
“Would you relieve everyone of consequences?”
She saw she was going to get nowhere, and just shook her head.
“Do what you can, do everything that you can, do it to the best of your ability, and leave the rest to fate. Or the gods. Or random luck. Your choice,” he advised. “By the time you get to be my age, you’ve learned to let a lot go.” He linked arms with her. “Let’s go back to the manor. There’s still a lot to do there, and it’s only two days to the Regatta.”
* * *
—
When Star entered his room, Kordas could tell that the Doll was agitated. How he could tell that, he was not sure; maybe he was becoming more sensitive to the Dolls—maybe that accident had shaken something loose in his mind. But it was very clear to him, at least, that Star badly wanted to talk about something, but was keeping the Valdemar badge on its hand covered.
“The Emperor has decreed a Blind Feast for tomorrow, at the midday meal,” said Star. “After which, the Emperor will issue decrees, then mount his chariot to watch as much of the rest of the Regatta as he cares to.”
“If he’s not there in person,” Kordas asked carefully, “who is? And what is a Blind Feast?”
At this point he had already guessed that the Emperor would be present at the Regatta until he got bored—and he had the idea that the Emperor got bored rather easily. Of course, he could be wrong. But he didn’t think he was.
Nevertheless, he also knew that there were clerks—clerks which were probably Dolls now—that were counting every single boat, and woe betide those who were supposed to come and didn’t show up. He knew for a fact that the Emperor had humans checking over those tallies, and watching for anyone who didn’t come prove their loyalty in his boat-parade. They’d better have good reasons, like being dead, or having the boat sink on the way there.
“The Emperor has a proxy,” Star said. “It’s a statue of himself. He can see through its eyes and hear through its ears. He generally does so, from the comfort of the Palace, because he very much enjoys a spectacle that is meant to glorify him. And a Blind Feast . . . is a meal that is a kind of test. You are fitted with a helmet that will only permit you to look down at your plate, and nowhere else. You are led into the Dining Hall by your Doll, and seated. You cannot see who you are with. The helmets are removed, at intervals, in reverse of rank, starting with Kings, if there are any there. There are no Kings here presently, only Princes.”
So you need to be very careful what you say, because you don’t know who you’ll be seated with. Another version of the Game. You needed to make entertaining conversation, but you had better not misjudge your audience.
Well, he had a way to be entertaining, all right. All he had to do was continue his laments about Isla.
Or maybe I should just rant about Hakkon.
Or perhaps, just perhaps, a new tune. Perhaps he should rant about how Hakkon had betrayed him. Maybe show some paranoia and wonder aloud if Hakkon planned to hire an assassin to kill him, so that he could take over as Duke.
Yes, I think that will do. It certainly would feed into things they themselves might be wondering about . . . if there is someone back home who is plotting to replace them.
“So just another hideous meal to get through,” he sighed, and looked out the window again.
The tower trembled, reminding him once again of the Child Below, and the terrifying Elementals that were searching for it.
“Will you be going down to dinner?” Star asked.
“No. I have no reason to. What is there down there for me? Just another meal I can’t eat, and people who can give me no advice.”
Tomorrow is the Regatta. And I still have no idea how I am going to keep my people who are left behind safe. Or how to free that poor Earth Elemental.
“This one will bring you and your companion food,” Star said; he glanced over at the Doll and saw that it was still covering its hand. Interesting. Why would they be scrying him now? And why for so long?
Maybe the mage assigned to me is just a sadist.
He sighed again, deciding that moping was probably the least entertaining thing he could do. Star waited to see if he would say anything else, then left quietly.
I’m so tired.
No, “tired” wasn’t the right word. He was exhausted, worn thin by all the things he had to do and the new things that kept piling up on him. It was almost as if he had been told to climb a high mountain alone, had gotten to the top, then discovered that it wasn’t the top after all, but merely a ledge on the way to the top, and there was more mountain above that. And mo
re above that. And more above that.
And now it was too late to go anywhere but further up, because an avalanche had fallen behind him, and he couldn’t return.
Well, I could. But the result of that would be very bad.
And then suddenly, an idea did occur to him.
What if I don’t leave during the Regatta?
What if I stay here?
If he stayed, the disappearance of the Dolls, the dissidents, and the hostages wouldn’t be linked to him—and thus, to Valdemar. The Dolls would, in theory, still be beholden to obey the Emperor even at the refuge, but it would be a moot point once they were outside the reach of the Empire, shielded from receiving any orders.
So then what would happen?
Well, the place would be in chaos. There would be no Dolls to serve the Palace, no Trap to make more. Supplies would arrive—and there would be no one to move them to where they were supposed to go. The elaborate meals would be impossible with no one to serve them. No one in the Palace would have servants to wait on them—what would they do?
A lot of them, if they have Gate talismans, will go home. But if they don’t? It was the Dolls that created the talismans. Did the Imperial mages still know how to do that? Probably, but it would take time, a lot of time, and they were probably rusty at it. There’d be no horses to take people home, so they’d have to go home by canal on barges. In fact, the Emperor would probably decree that people who were not actually useful go home, because they would be a drain on the resources of the Palace.
The Emperor would get priority on talismans, and he’d probably use them to bring warm bodies in from one of the legions to serve as servants instead of soldiers.
He might dragoon city folk into being servants. But they don’t know how to do that, and they’d be bad at it, and that would mean more chaos.
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