Chapter Text
Emilia stood in front of her wardrobe, uncertain. She couldn’t wear her old uniform; Sayo Dirzha was head page now, and since she was absolutely not going to carry messages for anybody she had better make sure no one got the wrong impression.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, love?” asked Hari, lazily. He had, indeed, slunk in late last night, self-conscious and miserable, but that seemed to be one of his natural mood down-swings. As far as she could determine, this time his partner had called a halt first and Hari was feeling bruised.
“No,” she said, “but you’re not the only one allowed to make mistakes.”
He chuckled. “Ah, that's all right then,” he said, then sighed. “I’m not helping you, like, am I?”
Emilia gave up thinking through the politics of various colour combinations and grabbed her smartest non-work dress robes. “I didn’t marry you for the company,” she said, waggling her eyebrows at him. This was an old joke, and they both laughed.
“I know, I know, I’m just sore because -”
“- you’d hoped to find me sitting here, bored out of my mind, ready to spend another two or three days in bed with you?” Emilia finished dryly.
“That too.” Hari smiled at her, the big slow smile with the hint of melancholy that had snagged her attention long ago and still made her weak at the knees. “No, pet, it’s just that I’ve been worrying about you, like. All that vim, nothing to do. I’ve not been - I’m not good at looking out for you, am I?”
“And now you’re being ridiculous, daahling,” said Emilia, drawing out her borrowed Court accent to make him smile. “My happiness doesn’t depend on you solving me like some kind of puzzle, don’t flatter yourself.” She pinned up her hair. “How does that look?”
Hari pulled himself out of bed and came over to stand in front of her. He tucked a stray curl back behind one ear, kissed her soundly, and pronounced, “that’ll do.” She laughed, thwapped his hand lightly, and pushed him back towards the bed.
“You stay there, Gus needs someone to make his godsawful coffee for,” she told him.
It was strange, leaving the house for work in full daylight, taking that familiar path up the hill towards the Palace around the noise and bustle of a city morning. Emilia walked slowly, enjoying the sense of purpose. She could always go back to being retired tomorrow.
Viorin was already at the coffee shop they’d chosen as their rendezvous. She had also chosen to avoid her old Palace uniform, and was wearing something smart and crisp in dark grey linen. She was acting casual enough, but Emilia saw the slight tremble in her hands. They were both anxious for this to work out, she realised, and both conscious of the treatment they’d had from the Palace in the past.
“Kiri’s expecting us at the noon bell,” said Viorin, “I thought we should talk over what we might offer her, first.”
They did, comparing notes on their experience and expertise. Viorin jotted down details in her slightly cramped scribal shorthand. Emilia, as she always had done, kept track in her mind. The exercise was more heartening than she had expected.
“They’d be fools to pass us up,” said Viorin, firmly, and Emilia found herself nodding in agreement.
Then, all at once, it was time to go. They walked together past the street market where the bureaucrats slipped out for lunch, up under the familiar flower-draped pagoda, and up the long winding road to the lower gates of the Palace. It was almost as though no time had passed at all.
At the gate the guards glanced through the letter Viorin showed them, took a quick look through their bags, and let them pass without demur. Viorin led the way up across the first courtyard and into the main corridor, before her steps slowed.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Emilia asked.
“Kiri didn’t send directions,” she replied, “I thought we could ask at Indrogan’s Private Office? It’s got to be somewhere up near there.”
They kept walking, but Emilia kept her eye out and within a few minutes had found a familiar page who was willing to take half a second to direct them up to Kiri’s new offices - disconcertingly, these turned out to be right up in the centre of the Palace, in the Tower itself.
Emilia led the way, up the long, long flights of stairs, across landings and corridors that were increasingly, grandly, ornate. Viorin had gone very quiet beside her. “Not long now,” she said, as they passed the first of the Lord Magi’s Apartments.
They reached the right landing eventually; when she realised where they were, even Emilia was somewhat daunted. She held her chin up and led Viorin along past the great doors of the Sun, the entrance to the Imperial Apartments themselves, trying to convince herself that this entire Palace was still her stomping ground.
“Saya Mapa!”
Emilia shook out of her abstraction to see her old friend Saya Sawasaki waving from the messenger station opposite. “Hello! How are you?” she said, gladly, then remembered herself and added “I can’t stop now, we’re stepping in to see Saya Kalikiri - do you know where she’ll be?”
“Kiri’s down that way, love,” said Saya Sawasaka. “It’s good to see you! Stop by later?”
“Of course,” said Emilia, feeling much better for seeing a friendly face. Viorin beside her flashed a nervous grin at Saya Sawasaki but was practically vibrating with her desire to keep moving, so they left it at that.
There were a number of offices on this corridor that curved round the outer walls of the Tower, which Emilia remembered as being regarded with some suspicion a year or so ago. Some sort of curse, she thought. Whatever-it-was had evidently been cleared out now, because the first office they looked into was crammed with people - and there was Kiri, tucked into a desk by the window, surrounded by a huddle of secretaries and analysts.
Emilia stopped a few paces back from the crowd. She felt Viorin hesitate beside her. Kiri was definitely in charge of this meeting, and it sounded as though she was running them all through a budget with a friendly but implacable air.
Even in the greyish brown robes of the secretariat, Kiri Kalikiri was a vibrant figure. Her dark hair was twisted up with a bright scarlet band, and her face was brilliant with laughter. She said something that Emilia couldn’t quite catch and the whole crowd laughed with her, then broke up as Kiri shooed them away with exaggerated motions. As soon as there was space, she hopped to her feet and nearly bounced over to Emilia and Viorin.
“You came!” she cried, offering them each a hug. “Oh, it’s so good to see you! I thought we could have lunch first, if you liked, then I’ll take you through to the boss? We can’t get out into town I’m afraid, I could only keep half an hour free in my calendar, you would not believe how ridiculous that’s getting, but still - the kitchen here’s not bad, if you’re happy with that?”
“Of course,” said Viorin, sounding as dazed as Emiila felt at the flood of words, “congratulations on the job, Kiri - how are you?”
Kiri rocked back on her heels and smiled with her whole self. “It’s amazing,” she said, “we’re getting so much done!”
She led the way across to the canteen, chattering nineteen to the dozen about the challenges of setting up a new Private Office. “Of course, having the Lord Emperor’s full support makes it much easier,” she added, off-hand, which gave Emilia almost as much of a jolt as the realisation that they would be eating alongside so many members of the Imperial Household. She did her best not to gawp at the glamorous silk-clad attendants, or the splendidly muscled guards (though they were very much worth looking at, and she was already regretting the struggle she would have to do them justice when describing them to Hari later).
“Have you met the Glorious One?” Viorin asked, her voice slightly hushed, as if in awe of the very subject. Emilia empathised. She might not be a devotee of the Imperial cult, but she had not grown up in the shadow of the Necropolis for nothing; she reeled at the thought of an Emperor being somebody who might do anything as mundane as meet with his officials.
“Yes,” said Kiri, simply, “I’m deputising for his secretary, after all.”
Emilia found she was frantically trying to construct a plausible sequence of events that might have taken Kiri from a solid place as a leading junior secretary in the Minister in Chief’s office to this extraordinary position, and failing utterly.
She thought back to a dozen lunches where they had all slipped out together to the street market. Kiri had often been strained by her role, always working hard at it, but she had been junior even to Cliopher Mdang, back then, and he was a fifth degree secretary, and most definitely not the kind of person who would ever be admitted to the Presence.
The food, unsurprisingly, was exquisite. Kiri explained with justifiable smugness that this canteen was staffed and run out of the back of the Imperial kitchens, as a training ground for the Imperial chefs. Then she abruptly seemed to realise that she had been doing most of the talking. “How is retirement treating you?” she asked Emilia.
Emilia hesitated, wondering how to answer, and her expression must have spoken for her because both other women spluttered into laughter. She had to laugh with them. “I hate it,” she confessed, “I have all these projects, and none of them are the slightest bit stretching. I like my allotment; I like having time to bake, and plan things with my neighbours, but… the days are long.” She sighed, saw the flicker of concern on Viorin and Kiri’s faces, and recovered her smile to reassure them. “That’s why I’m here, I suppose,” she said.
“I’m sure we can find something to keep you busy,” said Kiri, in a passable imitation of Princess Indrogan’s dry tones, and changed the subject by asking Viorin about her work with the trading houses.
Viorin’s recent commissions had mostly involved reorganising offices of often highly self-important people, and it was a treat to hear her stories of unimpressive egos that she had ushered - gently, or kicking and screaming, as appropriate - into more sensible working practices. “After nannying Meriloe for so long, there wasn’t much that could shock me,” she said, “I never thought all that experience wrangling nobles would come in so handy. Though it’s easier with the traders - some of them are nobles, I suppose, but they feel that they’ve earned their wealth, too, so they have to respect work. Even when they’re terrible at it.”
Something in the phrasing inspired Emilia to ask, “but how about the nobles you’re wrangling, Kiri? Your new boss, the Imperial Secretary - I hear he’s a hard worker, too?”
Kiri seemed more struck by this very natural question than Emilia would have expected. Her face lit up, just a little, and her eyes went wide, but she popped another rice ball into her mouth as though she wanted to think before replying. Emilia traded glances with Viorin. How interesting.
“That attractive, huh?” asked Viorin, batting her eyes at Kiri, who laughed just a little too hard.
“You tell me,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’ve arranged a brief chat with him, in a few minutes. He’s the one really running this restructure - for his Radiancy, of course.” A broad grin slipped out across her face, as if in spite of herself. “I think you’ll like him,” she said.
“Well, we certainly have to meet anyone who has this effect on you.” said Emilia, amusement and concern warring for her attention. It would do Kiri good to have something as human as a crush on her boss, but it was hardly sensible to get involved with any kind of actual flirtation with someone as high-powered and well-connected as the Imperial Secretary.
Kiri showed them where to clear their plates, near the serving tables. She picked up a couple of sandwich rolls and a coffee, which someone had left next to the rack of trays, and at Viorin’s curious look said, “it’s for the boss. He forgets to eat, otherwise.”
As Kiri led the way back into the corridor Viorin looked across and raised her eyebrows. Emilia shrugged, almost as if ‘making sure this man isn’t taking advantage of our Kiri’ had not just shot up to the top of her reasons to take the contract with the Palace.
Time to change the subject, again, and there was one thing that Emilia really did want to know. “So,” she asked, “whatever happened to the last member of our little gang? Is Sayo Mdang still making trouble somewhere?”
Kiri made a strange sound in her throat - a choked kind of laugh. “You could say that,” she said, and led them into another office.
This one was even smaller than the last and, if possible, even more crammed full of people in secretarial and analyst robes. There was, however, one long desk piled with orderly stacks of papers that had only one person sitting behind it.
Sayo Mdang did not stir as Kiri slipped the rolls and coffee down beside him. She glanced back at them, eyes sparkling, and made a shh! gesture. He was evidently entirely absorbed in his report, because he managed to take a bite and a sip before it occurred to him to look up, first blinking at the food and drink in his hands, and then smiling broadly at his visitors.
“Saya Mapa! Saya Hassia! You came back!” he cried, dropping his lunch to jump up and come round the desk towards them,where he faltered a little at the totally flabbergasted expressions on their faces.
“Dear gods,” said Viorin fervently, “don’t tell me they let you in front of the Emperor?”
“Well… I could hardly serve as his secretary, otherwise,” said Sayo Mdang, falsely demure, with perhaps a touch of genuine uncertainty behind it.
“Kiri,” said Emilia, calmly, “I am going to destroy you. I hope you know that.”
Kiri dissolved into helpless laughter. “I’m - not - sorry,” she managed. “The looks on your faces!”
And then Emilia was laughing too, they were all laughing, so hard that she felt tears start. It was infectious; a few of the nearby secretaries had joined in too, and most of the room was smiling.
“Come on,” said Sayo Mdang, “let me find you a seat and we can talk about why you’re here.”
There were enough chairs around the desk to make it clear that he held impromptu meetings here fairly regularly, and they were an odd enough assortment that she was sure the whole setup had come together by chance. Viorin took a desk chair that surprised her with a swivel mechanism, Emilia found a high-backed wooden thing with elaborate carvings that made her sit stiffly upright, and Kiri pulled over a folding padded chair that was covered in threadbare but glorious embroidery of peach and teal birds and fruit.
“You’re really the Imperial Secretary?” Emilia couldn’t help but ask.
“I really am,” said Sayo Mdang. His voice was not smug, which would have been entirely understandable, but tinged with an emotion that Emilia found totally unfamiliar, coming from him. Looking at his face, she thought it might be awe.
His explanation would have been brief, but Kiri broke in to prod and clarify and make sure they had the full picture. Sayo Mdang had, characteristically, got himself kicked off a secondment to General Ravillon’s headquarters for an excess of honesty. This happened on the same day as the Sun on Earth dismissed a secretarial candidate and the Master of Offices, who had been nurturing a grudge against him for a while, had taken the opportunity to promote him with malice aforethought.
So far, so predictable. Viorin had confessed, once, that she was afraid Meriloe would find a way to threaten Mdang - and sending him as a secretary-candidate to the Emperor was undoubtedly an attempt on both his career and his life. The Glorious One was worshipped as a god, surrounded by layers of magic and mundane taboos, etiquette, and ceremonial requirements, and notoriously difficult to please. At best a mistake would be automatic dismissal, not just from the role but from the Imperial Service; at worst, those breaking the taboos could be blinded or even executed, either by the direct magical backwash in the moment or by the priest-wizards when they came to clear up the aftermath.
What was impossible to grasp was just how and why this attempt had backfired so spectacularly that Merry had, according to rumour, fled the Palace in fear of his life. One of the things Emilia liked about Sayo Mdang - had liked since the first day he turned up in the Pages Hall, a mysterious grumpy stranger with a penchant for paperwork and a knack for soothing difficult drunks - was that he paid remarkably little attention to any of the complex rules of etiquette that governed almost every interaction in the Palace. He picked a direction and kept going, and made his suggestions with such candid simplicity that you could be carried along in his wake for days before you realised quite how radical his solutions were.
Nobody else would have thought to promote Emilia to head up the Hall; she was not entirely sure that anybody else in the Palace thought the common pages were even literate, let alone capable of running a major logistical operation, but Sayo Mdang had made it happen.
She would not have expected this attitude to serve him well in the presence of the Last Emperor of Astandalas and Lord of Zunidh.
About his appointment, Sayo Mdang said, “after a brief trial, his Radiancy was kind enough to confirm me as his secretary, and I have been serving in that capacity ever since.”
Emilia was close enough to see Kiri kick him under the desk.
“What my esteemed and revered boss means to say,” Kiri said, “is that he astonished the Tower and the Service and everybody else in the Palace by actually doing the job, and when they picked their jaws up off the floor the Emperor and the Minister in Chief backed him to the hilt. And it was a mess. Did you know, the Glorious One didn’t even have a calendar? Nobody was coordinating anything for him.”
“You must have loved that,” Emilia said, thinking of the glee with which Sayo Mdang had torn into the mass of unsorted paperwork in her old office.
“So what do you need us for?” asked Viorin.
“That’s my part,” said Kiri, “it took a while, but even the mighty Mdang has been forced to admit that he can’t fix the entire government all on his lonesome. The Emperor has signed off a budget for us to set up the office here, and he’s given Cliopher permission to propose changes to the Service. I’m looking for people to help with that part, and since Princess Indrogan decided to dissolve the Administrative Office we’re feeding in on its replacement. So I thought of you.”
Viorin looked intrigued, but asked sceptically, “and the Minister in Chief listens to you?”
Kiri shrugged. “We’re speaking for the Tower. Cliopher makes sure the Emperor’s on board.”
Emilia found herself trying not to stare at her friend, again. Kiri had always had poise, and a certain sparkling charm, with her big dark eyes and crooked grin. She had never before radiated this level of - confidence? Enthusiasm? Joy, even? - it was as infectious as her earlier laughter. It made Emilia want to say yes, want to pitch in and help solve problems and scrabble together through the snakepit unravelling all its knots until the world was a better place.
“The Emperor wants a government that works for the people of Zunidh,” said Sayo Mdang, as earnestly as ever, and as calmly as if speaking for the Emperor’s personal views on - on anything - was not bordering on heresy. “Princess Indrogan’s devolving most of the powers to appoint out to the Ministries, but - I want someone to check that who knows how Merry’s office actually worked. And Saya Mapa, I have some ideas about what could sit with the pages - about promotion routes, and induction into the Service - but I need to test them with someone who understands the work the pages do. Will you help us? Please?”
“Of course,” said Viorin, at once. Sayo Mdang lit up with delight but not, alas, even the slightest hint of personal interest. Emilia managed not to roll her eyes, though it was a near thing. She was absolutely going to take Viorin to meet Hari and get his advice, and perhaps some introductions.
And then all three of them looked at her, pleadingly. “I’ll need to think about it,” she told them. The answer was yes, of course, but it would do them good to be forced to give her space. Also… “If I do sign up, I have one stipulation,” she added. “No, two. I’m not making any new oaths to the Glorious One.”
Sayo Mdang looked obscurely hurt, as though this was a personal slight. Ah. Emilia could almost feel the clunk as the penny dropped at the back of her brain. That… actually made a disturbing amount of sense, come to think of it. The man was incapable of doing anything by halves. Poor Viorin.
“Secondly,” she went on, “I want to see you - all of you - outside the Palace, at least once a month. Lunch, drinks, I don’t care. We can start this evening, if you like.”
Kiri and Viorin enthusiastically seconded this motion. Sayo Mdang agreed more doubtfully, which didn’t surprise her. He had never been as regular as the rest of them about meeting up, and, well, he had always been more of a colleague than a friend. If she could get him out of the building once or twice a year she’d take that as a victory.
It was not until they were most of the way down the hill outside the Palace that Emilia realised how quickly she had, effectively, caved in to the general excitement. Seeing the bounce in Viorin’s steps, she could hardly regret it.
Later, at the Sun-in-Glory, Kiri bought the first round. “I owe you,” she said.
Emilia regarded her fondly. Kiri was still in her secretarial robes, though she had left her hat up at the Palace somewhere. From top to toe she looked like any other secretary in the pub - a little scruffy at the end of the day, perhaps. There was a smudge of ink around her writing fingers, and a matching dark splotch on the robes themselves where her hands rested, and wisps of hair were escaping the tight dark bun on the back of her head. She seemed entirely unaware of the space that opened up around them as people noticed her, and the sidelong admiring glances from the other bureaucrats at the bar.
“I can’t believe you did that to us,” said Viorin.
“I’m not sorry,” Kiri replied, laughing again, “it was perfect.”
“Is Sayo Mdang joining us?” Emilia asked, though she already knew the answer.
Kiri sighed. “He said he might be along later, so… he might show up. He’s very - absorbed in the work.”
“...and in the Emperor?”
Kiri laughed again, a little ruefully, “you saw that, didn’t you? He gets misty eyed whenever you mention his Radiancy… the man is besotted. And the work - well, you remember what he’s like when he sets his mind to something? Like that, only more so.”
“And you?” Emilia asked, as gently as she could.
“Oh, we get on excellently,” said Kiri, brightening, “I’m having so much fun.”
Emilia thought about herself and Hari. Sometimes a partnership was… not what you expected. Sometimes it was bigger than two people. It had never occurred to her before to think that Kiri and Sayo Mdang were alike in needing a project, but then Kiri had always thrown herself into her work so smoothly that it scarcely raised a ripple. No wonder the two of them worked so well together.
Sayo Mdang was likely a lost cause, but Emilia felt, looking from Viorin to Kiri, that she had a duty to ensure that the rest of these ridiculous souls made at least some friends outside their obsession.
She sipped her drink, pondered for a moment, and then said, “there’s a new show down at the Riverbank this week - something classical, I think, about Aurelius Magnus. Hari’s been working on the set, says it’s good. Fancy giving it a try?”