“How she must have suffered, your mother
. . .” the Infanta said. Her voice was labored as always—even and almost monotone, as her forced breath came like clockwork. And yet there was a hint of something new in it, while her blank gaze never stopped observing his face.
“Fortunately, her suffering is over. She was found lying in her bed, cold, one morning in the autumn of the third year since the loss of my brother. I was away on some meaningless estate business and it was my younger brother, Celen, who found her thus. My sister ran for the priest.
. . . In death, I am told, Eloise Fiomarre was like the holy Icon of the Mother of God. It’s the only thing I can say in consolation. And in her fingers she held an old letter from my father. . . . We buried her in the family crypt with that letter, and with all of my father’s old things we could find—since she would never again lie next to his body. I don’t doubt it was her wish.”
The Infanta’s breath came in a strange shuddering exhalation, as though she was going to say something, but held the words back.
“Meanwhile,” he continued, his face growing weary suddenly, “my sister, Oleandre, had grown to be a lovely maiden, of an age to marry. But because of our present state of disgrace, Oleandre remained alone and unclaimed by any neighbor nobility. No one wanted to align themselves in marriage with the despised Fiomarre orphans. The one family that had once expressed to my father an interest in betrothing their son to Oleandre, went back on their word. Their strapping son married another young damsel of a Styx family with far less worth . . . but also far less blemish. Indeed, it’s not a difficult thing to find any family with less blemish than ourselves, these days. . . . Oleandre plans to take the vows soon, and I haven’t the heart to dissuade her from the nunnery.
“My youngest brother, Celen, is all that’s left. And the youth expects to—God only knows what he can do now. To enlist, maybe, somewhere, anywhere, for he has a death wish—but he certainly would die first before joining the Imperial military. He told me, when I was about to make this final trip, that he would go in my place, or we go together
. . . And I didn’t let him. At least one of us must remain in this world.”
“What a truly tragic story, Marquis.”
He looked at her in a sudden flaring of disdain. “You call me Marquis? I thought, daughter of Liguon, that I am a dead man without rank. Or is it that you make sport of me now, before I go to my execution?”
The Infanta slowly moved forward in her seat. “If you are a dead man, then what am I?”
“That, I still don’t know,” he said. “But I know that what I am now is
nothing
. Fiomarre is nothing. And thus, nothing matters anymore.”
“Nothing
. . .” the Infanta echoed quietly. “It is what I am also. We are suddenly much alike.”
And then, unexpectedly, she rose from her seat. She stood before Vlau Fiomarre who towered over her, despite the added height of her tall wig. The grey daylight came in to illuminate half of her face, leaving the rest in shadowed silhouette. He could see her pale bloodless lips, her great smoke-hued eyes.
Fiomarre involuntarily took a step back, his chains clanging.
“Are you afraid of me?” she said softly.
“I . . . don’t know.” His answer came softly also, after a delay.
“Your story is tragic and for that reason impossible. I want to believe you but it simply cannot be, such horrible injustice.”
“Believe what you will!” he exclaimed. “I am done speaking, Liguon. You’ve had your amusement. Now, take my life or have me tortured first, and be done with it.”
“But you are not done hating me,” she replied. “And—I must have the truth.”
Fiomarre looked down at her with black fire in his eyes. “I will be done hating you when the stars fall and the world ends, and no sooner!”
“You are unaware, I see,” she replied. “For, the world as we know it
has
ended. Death and all dying has been stopped. I cannot take your life even if I wanted to, for none of us can die now, only malinger. . . .”
And as he watched her in slowly dawning horror, she called out loudly, “Guards!”
Immediately two armed guards, who had been standing ready outside her chamber’s door, entered, coming to attention.
“There will be no execution,” the Infanta told them. “Take this man to apartments appropriate to a guest of the Crown, and do not mistreat him ever again. Remove his chains. Have proper clothing and food brought to him. I will have need of him shortly.”
The expression on Fiomarre’s face was one of incredulity. And then it was replaced by suspicion, and again the hatred flared.
“Do what you will, daughter of the devil! Play your devious game, but you cannot touch me, not ever again, none of you, Liguon!” He spat the words out angrily, as the guards came to stand on both sides of him uncertainly, with suspicious looks.
“Unchain him,” the Infanta repeated.
“Your—Imperial Highness, the keys—I haven’t the keys here, Your Imperial Highness, they are in the prison below,” one of the men said. “It wasn’t expected that they be required, and it’s always a precaution to not have the keys, so as not to give the dangerous prisoner an additional chance to escape.
. . .”
“Enough. Go get the keys,” she said.
The guard started, but immediately complied, hastening out, while the other remained in place, sheepish.
“Am I no longer a prisoner, then?”
“No.”
Fiomarre was staring at her with a locked-down, no longer readable expression. Yet at the faintest edges of it, there was that same incredulity and just possibly, mockery.
But the Infanta had already turned away. Moving slowly like a puppet, she returned to her chair, sank down like a weight of stone. From there her voice came, toneless and yet empty now of the last vestiges of curiosity, or even that parody-shadow of life that somehow animated her.
“You are free
. . .” she said. “If you have any honor, you will stay here in the Imperial guest apartments, and wait for the results of my investigation. That is—if there is that much honor left in you, of the ancient noble Fiomarre, as you claim to be. . . . And if not, you may simply go. You are . . . free.”
And she went silent.
Fiomarre stood, stricken by something.
“Liguon
. . .” he said. “Upon my word of honor, I will stay.”
J
osephuste Liguon II, Emperor of the Realm, could not sleep. It was the second night since the killing of his daughter. And although the first one was spent sleepless, in a kind of powerless torpor of psychological devastation, seated on the Throne in the Silver Hall next to the equally broken Empress, and the day that followed was such that no words were adequate to express anything, nor truly to comprehend—despite the weariness, and the compounding overload of insane events, there was no way to release the mind to sleep’s oblivion. . . .
Everything was impossible, and suddenly hardly anything mattered. Human reactions no longer had a place.
Had there been a clear-cut death of the Infanta, the Emperor would have known how to act. He would have gone mad with anguish as would any father in his place. He would have grieved. He would have immediately punished the offender.
But there was no death here. There was murder, yes. Loss, yes, terribly so, for Claere his child was no longer; she was gone, and
something else
was now inhabiting her damaged shell of a body, something else was in her place.
And yet there was no ending. No completion, not even a way to complete the course of grief. And no way to properly punish the murderer, except for the application of prolonged and endless pain without actually damaging his body to the extent of death, at which point he too would become
someone else
and in that manner escape his punishment. Besides, Claere herself had requested, in a strange act of mercy, clemency for the murderer.
None of it made any sense, the Emperor thought.
For, in this suspended state, the world seemed to have taken a breath and was holding it. Nothing was ended, nothing could be over.
No rest
. . . no peace.
And so, tormented by the bizarreness of it all, looking back on what had come to pass, and imagining impossible variations of what was yet to come, Josephuste Liguon II lay awake in his luxurious bed. At his side was his Imperial spouse who also seemed merely to lie motionless in empty silence. He knew the Empress was awake like himself, for her breath came in occasional shudders, and he sensed she was holding back sobs.
Eventually, toward dawn, sleep must have come after all, for the next thing the Emperor knew was a very gentle and polite touch on his shoulder by his Valet of the Chamber. The Valet had the singular Honor and Privilege of being permitted to touch Their Imperial Majesties, once per day only, if it were absolutely necessary to interrupt Imperial slumber.
Today the Valet of the Chamber used his Privilege just after dawn. His Imperial Majesty had an urgent demand for a formal Audience from the emissaries of Balmue, of all things. This was not to be put off, for all of a sudden they were leaving.
The Emperor groaned, squinting at the faint light of dawn coming through the slit in the window drapery and the newly lit roaring fire in the ornately framed fireplace. He rose, sat up in the grandiose bed, throwing one glance at the distant and motionless figure of the Empress at his far left, then nodded his permission. And immediately a cadre of silent and skillful servants went to work on getting him presentable for the day.
He had managed to avoid seeing the Balmue diplomats all of the last day, being naturally preoccupied as he was, but obviously politics could not take a break. Besides, the Balmue had been scheduled for an Audience with him a morning ago.
The Emperor drank a hot cup of breakfast tea, tasting nothing of the usually fragrant tea leaves, and refused his favorite crumpets and pastry.
Within a half hour he was in his Private Audience Chamber, dressed in a coat and pants of pale saffron silk and a platinum powdered wig, seated upon red cushions on a carved wooden throne of dark cherry wood. Just steps behind him, in a velvet draperied secret alcove were hidden the Duke Claude Rovait and the Duke Andre Eldon, of Plaimes. Both were clandestine Imperial advisors, here upon the Emperor’s command, installed in secret in order to listen in on the upcoming Audience and later to interpret.
As soon as his men were in place and the drapery fell to the parquet floor to conceal them, the Emperor made a hand motion and the Chamberlain on the other side of the doors announced the Balmue diplomats—the Marquis Nuor Alfre and the Viscount Halronne Deupris, Peers of the Domain.
Two men entered.
They were clad formally for an audience, in the colors of Balmue, silver and sienna brown. The older, a ruddy-brown haired and bearded lord with weathered skin and a tall, lean built, was the Marquis Alfre, ambassador of Balmue. At his side stood his aide, a shorter, youthful man with a rounded, fair face and blond hair, the Viscount Deupris.
Both came forward and stopped the proper ten steps short of the Throne, then bowed with precision and remained thus until the Emperor indicated in a drained, powerless voice, “Rise, gentlemen.”
They straightened, and the ambassador spoke: “Your Imperial Majesty, we thank you for the Audience, on behalf of our liege Lord, His Royal Majesty, King Clavian Sestial of Balmue, Vassal of the Sovereign Rumanar Avalais of the Domain and its Territories.”
Marquis Alfre was an old-school diplomat, with many years of polish imbedded in him. But even he obviously found it difficult to follow a protocol under the current circumstances. He paused, cleared his throat and then said, “First, our sincere and profound condolences on Your Imperial Majesty’s familial
. . . loss—that is, on the situation with the . . .
assault
on Her Imperial Highness.”
The Emperor did not blink, but his posture took on a particular stillness, in which he was a statue of frozen winter stone. And for a long moment he said nothing. He remembered, as an aside, that yes, the Balmue men had been present, had seen it all happen before their eyes.
. . .
“Yes,” he said in a wooden voice, after a very long pause. “Your condolences are
. . . appreciated.”
The Marquis exhaled his held breath, and so did the younger Viscount at his side. And then at last they got down to business.
“Our apologies, but the reason for disturbing Your Imperial Majesty at such an early hour,” said Marquis Alfre, “is that we have been summoned to return immediately to our homeland. Unfortunately, we cannot extend our imposition upon your Imperial Hospitality for even an hour longer, and therefore this conversation must be brief while a more in-depth discussion needs be postponed for a future visit.”
The Emperor nodded.
“Your Imperial Majesty,” the Viscount Deupris spoke for the first time. “I was asked to convey on behalf of His Royal Majesty King Clavian Sestial that Balmue is extremely interested in furthering our positive relations, in discussing the border access protocols, the expansion of trade treaty, and the exchange of resources. However, as a vassal member of the Domain, Balmue is constrained by any limits placed upon it by the Sovereign, as you are well aware. And one of such limits has just been enforced, according to the correspondence we received today from the court of Balmue, as forwarded from the Sapphire Court.”