Lord and Lady Brenwood were popular hosts because they discreetly opened private rooms for all manner of not-quite-reputable activities. Chaperones knew better than to let their charges wander freely, though any wandering debutante would have been steered away from the corridor by a footman pretending to read the paper. The footman looked up at Rafe, who gave him a nod as he went past. From a room whose door was not quite shut came the giggles and piercing whispers of drunkards trying to be quiet. The footman went back to his paper. Rafe made straight for the Smoking Room.
The muscular bouncer at the door made no attempt to look anything but what he was—menacing, slow, and dedicated to the single purpose of keeping the undesirables out. And possibly deaf too, since he didn’t even flicker an eyelash at the shouting from within.
Rafe opened the door into bluish smoke, sickly-sweet smells, and the odors of bodies kept shut up too long. He put a lightly-scented handkerchief to his nose and mouth and surveyed the scene.
His Royal Highness Prince Tristan, heir to the throne, only son of King Roland the Fifth, nearly tripped over his feet in his haste to wave a handful of cards in the face of another flushed youth. Lourvey, Tristan’s bosom friend and greatest rival in turns, and also Lady Amanthea’s feckless grandson. Yet another cousin of Rafe’s.
Sel, why am I cursed with such hotheaded relatives?
“So, you think I’ve had too much luck tonight, eh?” Tristan bellowed. “Why don’t you come out and say what you really mean, like a man, eh?”
Lourvey hop-skipped back, away from the large obsidian that protruded from Tristan’s silver ring and threatened to gouge out his eye. “I will, if you were willing to take your punches like a man instead of hiding behind the Bloodoak name. But one cannot say anything to the
prince
or he’s going to go crying home to his mama.”
Rafe, looking around, was struck by how many older gentlemen—all politicians and lords—watched the two drunken youths with glittering speculative looks. As if they
wanted
this stupid wine-induced juvenile fight to get out of hand.
Then he shook himself. He was seeing conspiracies everywhere, an expected side effect of his job. Of course none of them wanted to interfere too quickly, since Tristan was notoriously prickly about royal privilege. Immunity from the tantrums of royal brats—especially when said brat was a future king—was not a guarantee, even if you were a great man.
Unless you happened to be the brat’s cousin and remembered whacking him around during sword practice, guarding his hide, and bullying him into some semblance of proper behavior.
Rafe opened his mouth to utter some withering remarks on the follies of callow youth, then shut it again. This overgrown brat of a cousin was, by Selene's grace—or dark humor—the future King. Treat him with some dignity and maybe he'd actually start acting dignified.
“Your Highness,” said Rafe. “I’m glad to have found you. There is a matter of some delicacy and urgency that requires your immediate attention.”
Tristan twisted around, almost lost his balance, and bumped against a small inlaid table bearing a half-completed board game which promptly fell off. Counters rolled every which way. The erstwhile players winced.
“Rafe?” Tristan's flushed face paled. “You're back.”
“Indeed, Your Highness.” Rafe kept his tone pleasant and courteous, as if finding the crown prince drunk and on the verge of a brawl was a normal occurrence. The other men in the room seemed to draw back. Their eyes lost their feral gleam, their lids dropped, their expectant poses slumped back into ennui. “Come, we have much to discuss.”
“I—I suppose so.” Tristan stared doubtingly at Rafe, as if he were not used to such awesome politeness and formality from his cousin.
Which to be honest, he wasn't.
With Tristan staring as if he had three heads, the other men trying not to glance at him, and Lourvey looking only at his feet, Rafe felt his polite smile turn frigid. He resisted the urge to haul Tristan out by the scruff of his neck and added, "There are some matters of state that you need to be acquainted with."
Immediately. Like how to conduct yourself as befits the prince, on pain of being paddled.
For the first time, Tristan seemed to realize how tattered his dignity was. He deflated, then drew himself up. "Lead on, cousin." He might as well have been talking to a jailer about to take him to the executioner's block, so joyless was his tone.
Rafe bowed and gestured for Tristan to precede him. He gave a swift glance around the room, taking a mental note of all the prominent figures. If tonight’s episode appeared in a tabulation of the heir’s unfitness for office in some antimonarchist editorial, he’d have a roster of likely suspects. From a corner, Verney gave him an oily smirk. Rafe responded with a cool nod.
He kept a deferential half-step behind his cousin all the way down the corridor, through a pause in the foyer while Tristan shrugged into his elaborate purple overcoat, hat, gloves, and muffler, and out onto the broad veranda. At the head of the steps, Tristan said, “You can stop pretending to respect me now, Rafe.” He didn't turn his head.
Rafe came to walk beside his cousin. They meandered down the Brenwoods’ path and onto the brick avenue. "Care to tell me what happened back there?" His breath turned to mist in front of his face.
Tristan shrugged, shoulders slumped, head down, as if burrowing deeper into his clothing. Beside the young man, Rafe felt very correct and military. What were Tristan's minders thinking, letting him run around unaccompanied like that?
Rafe kept the silence expectant, like a deep hole waiting to be filled up. Finally, Tristan said, "It was nothing much. We were playing and drinking and Lourvey was being a rotten compost-digger as usual."
“He was accusing you of cheating and you looked ready to have a brawl,” Rafe said. “That doesn't sound like nothing much to me.”
“Ah, yes, the crown prince must be above reproach.” Tristan tried to sneer, but his heart wasn't in it.
“Where's Dunbridge?” Dunbridge was Tristan's tutor and guide, a sprightly old gentleman with twinkling eyes.
“Under house arrest.” Tristan shrugged.
Rafe raised his eyebrows. "What?"
“Something to do with gambling debts and trading agreements and conflicts of interest. Nobody bothered to explain it to me, but the Assembly got all hot and bothered about it a week or two ago.”
“Rocquespur?”
“No.” Tristan shook his head. “He's been away. It was some people in the cabinet who got on Father's case.”
“And now you're let loose on the world without any shield.”
“I don't need protection!”
“I was thinking about everyone else,” said Rafe mildly, but it did not get the laugh he expected. All right, it wasn’t a good joke.
They were silent as they descended into the inner city. Buildings, none higher than three storeys, lined the streets. Most of the windows were dark, though orange light slipped out between the shutter slats of a few. Gas lamps with decorative tops, with overlapping pools of light, marched beside them. The odor of smoke and herbs formed a heady mixture, clearing the sinuses. The cold air was bracing, clarifying. Rafe loved it.
"Sel!" Tristan spat out the word. "I hate this."
"Hmm?" Jarred, Rafe stared at his young cousin.
Tristan gestured. "This… being out here in the cold, with all the stars glaring at you. You can't run, you can't hide, everywhere they find you." He kicked at a pebble and sent it skittering down the hill, probably to land on some poor footman's unsuspecting head. Rafe held his peace. It was not the time to remind Tristan of the laws prohibiting the throwing of stones on these steep slopes.
"Out here, you can always hear the belching of the factories, the rumble of the machines. Listen." Tristan stopped and so did Rafe. The faint noises were the very backdrop of Oakhaven life. They had never bothered Rafe before. But then, he was not destined to be enslaved to them.
"The Machine?" Rafe kept his tone gentle, but diffident. Young men were difficult to deal with, being skittish and passionate, easy to take offence, and prone to sulking. He had been a particularly good specimen himself, until the army had knocked some sense into him.
"Father's making those noises again. Rambling about how wonderful the view is, how it's time to take up my responsibilities, yark yark yark." Tristan made an impatient, probably rude gesture. "Even Mother's run out of excuses and saying things like, 'Maybe you ought, Tristan' and 'Perhaps it's time, Tristan'."
Oakhaven’s Primary, known simply as the Machine, had historically been operated by the kings of Oakhaven. Their ability to communicate with the Primary, which controlled the other machinery the kayan had created and left behind, was hereditary. The monarchs oversaw the deployments of dozens of machines that transported goods, dug tunnels, responded to emergencies, and attacked invading armies. Without the machines, the city, and therefore the state, would be effectively shut down.
And Tristan would be the one with that sort of power.
Sel help us.
"Well, I don't think anyone's going to chain you to the Machine for days at a time, like they do in Blackstone. Your father will ease you into it, just like his father did before him."
Tristan twitched his shoulder as if shaking off a fly. He tossed a handful of pebbles into a pool, causing the ghostly fish to swim every which way. "But I don’t want to end up like Father. He'd happily spend every hour with the Machine, and when he does come out of the Machine Room, all he talks about are sewers and trolleys. He doesn’t even go out anymore, unless he has to. Why, for my birthday he was barely at the Gardens for an hour before he ran skittering back to hide with the Machine! I don't want a life like that. I
like
to walk about, I
like
to visit the markets and watch the barges sail down the river."
"Not all kings had that kind of relationship with the Machine, Tristan. You don’t have to spend every waking moment with it. You just have to make sure that it does what we want it to do."
"To hear Father talk, you have to spend all the time with it or you won't know what you're seeing and what you’re doing. He was actually eulogizing the other day, lecturing me about how the Machine is like a jealous mistress. That you need to lavish lots of attention on her or she'll sulk and won’t do what you say. He actually called it
her
. How sick is that?" Rafe bit his lip to keep from laughing at Tristan's air of moral outrage, more suited to a governess than a wild young man. Though he did agree that Roland took his role a bit too seriously.
"Is that why you've been getting yourself into trouble? Getting drunk, making reckless wagers, and all that? Opening cages at the Zooarium and spooking horses at the Girdlesday Parade?"
"Didn’t take them long to recite you a list of my misdeeds," muttered Tristan.
"I am junior assistant to the First Secretary of Information, after all," said Rafe, mysteriously. "It’s my business to know these things." Tristan didn’t need to know that Rafe had read about his escapades in the days-old newspaper that had been wrapped around the fish and chips he’d had for breakfast.
"Speaking of which." Tristan looked at him for the first time, a sober clear-eyed look. "What about the Blackstone mission? How did you get out? What did you find? They said you were hurt—did those thugs get you? What—?"
Rafe held up his hands. "Hold, hold. Yes, the mission did go awry and yes, it was close. But I'm out now, and the stories of my torture and execution were greatly exaggerated, as you can see. More than that I'm afraid I can't say."
"So much for discussing urgent affairs of state." Tristan’s face fell into sulky lines. It was still a boyishly soft face, but there were some world-weary lines in it. He was a lighter-in-coloring version of Rafe, hair yellow instead of brown, eyes blue instead of hazel, but there was something half-formed and unfinished about him. And Rafe didn't like the direction that finishing was taking.
"If it were up to me, you'd know such important things," said Rafe.
"But it's not, so what can we do?" Tristan's attempt at cynicism was frighteningly accurate. He yawned. "I'm tired. I want my bed. Let's go, Rafe."
As he tramped beside his stumbling cousin, Rafe decided to petition Uncle Leo to give the crown prince more access to sensitive information. He was prince, and if Roland died in the arms of the Machine tonight, he'd be king.
An untrained, untried king on the throne, while Rocquespur and his ilk sniffed around like rabid rats and Blackstone waited to pounce if Oakhaven showed any signs of weakness. That was not a comforting thought.
A bell tolled, deep notes throbbing through the air. Tristan drew in his breath with a hiss. Rafe, who had walked abroad in the Hour of the Dead many times, glanced at him. "There's a tavern not too far from here. The food's dreadful, but the beer is good and the entertainment's fine, provided you like puppetry and board games."
Tristan gave an annoyed shrug. "I don't care. Let's go home."
They walked in silence, Tristan trying to hide his darting glances and Rafe steadfastly ignoring his cousin's unease. The chatter of machines abroad settled into a comfortable background noise. None of these machines was a hunter, all were busy with mundane tasks. Now and again, a distant rumble sounded, interspersed with clangs. Compost bins being hauled away, Rafe guessed. That long whine and screech was a caravan of trolley cars emerging from underground and taking a shortcut over the tracks set into King's Way. They saw no other folk. Oakhaven was deserted, all people locked tight inside, sleeping, reveling, keeping off the streets out of long tradition and cultural fear.
Rafe spread his arms wide. "This," he said portentously, "is the Hour of the Machine. Look upon the metal monsters and shudder, ye mortals." His gesture encompassed the empty streets.
Tristan snorted.
Rafe grinned and was about to make a needling remark when a high-pitched shriek scorched through his skull. Rafe staggered as a machine gibbered in distress, then sprinted towards the noise.