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Early morning twilight finds the port town of Derdriu sleeping under its chilly grey caress. All is quiet, on the hill where the old ducal manor still stands, through the outmoded residential neighborhoods that line its slopes, past the former arsenal and toward the new university. The students have finally snuffed their lamps; it is hours yet before the bureaucrats will take their desks to scratch out the day's administrative business.
Miles away, in the great capital, there has been no sleep. The lanterns will have burned all through the night, from the marble offices of the new Administrative Building, through the old Imperial Palace, to the private chambers of the Emperor and the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Today is, after all, a momentous day.
But not in Derdriu. Here the metronome of the city's pulsing heartbeat is not the offices of state but the port. Now, as at every hour of the clock's round, the new docks swarm with crew, clerks, customs agents. Here and there the rare passenger. Ships depart the harbor bound up and down the eastern coast of the continent, across the ocean to foreign ports, to parts unknown. It is these ships that make Derdriu thrive, that make her strong, a flourishing organ integral to the body of the Empire. Policy is a matter for the capital. Derdriu is a city of commerce.
Nevertheless. Whether the crews and clerks and customs agents spare a barbed comment for the old order or go about their business with eyes only for the next cargo; whether the regional administrators take their desks in the converted palace with an extra degree of self-consciousness or with the disinterested habituality of the daily grind; whether the last scattered shoots of the once-great Houses sleep peacefully past the cock’s crow or wake in their feathered beds naked with the absence of something worn so lightly for so long—in Derdriu, as in Enbarr, as throughout the Empire, the sun will rise on a world changed.
First light is creeping over the horizon as an early passenger, tall and erect, concludes his business with the shipping agent of the Radiant Dawn. "All seems to be in order, my—" The agent stops, flustered. "I beg your pardon. Sir."
"It is I who am in your debt," says his client, with the precise etiquette no title can confer or displace, as the first rosy fingers of dawn touch down on a brand new age.
It is Year Seventeen of the Unified Era, and the former Count of Gloucester is booking passage to Almyra.
* * *
"You always have to be so dramatic," Hilda said when Lorenz went to visit her at Goneril for the last time. Behind the mask of petulance, tears glinted, diamond bright.
"So I have been told," he said, gentle.
They'd wasted so much time, in the early years. He, thoughtless, never considering that when he wanted to see her he could simply go. She, spurning any hint of pity, determined not to ask. And now he is leaving, for—how long? Likely some years; perhaps less. Perhaps more.
If he were to stay, for any reason, it would be for her. And were he to do so, and she to find out—well. Mere physical encumbrance would not stop her from serving him his just desserts.
"What are you going to do there?" she asks now.
Whatever he asks of me: something he cannot say even to her. Can barely say to himself, in the privacy of his own mind. They are older, and romanticism rings hollower than it ever did in their youth. It is, nevertheless, the truth. And will be even if what he is asked to do is turn around and return to the Empire.
"Learn the customs, I imagine. Listen to the king argue half a dozen policies with himself. Raise objections that are roundly ignored."
"He won't ignore them. You'll hear all about why they're wrong."
He snorts, an inelegant sound. "True."
"Lorenz," she says, very softly. Eyes that know too much, a voice that shies from inflicting hurt. A hand over his, the tender warmth of a friend. "What if it doesn’t—you know?"
He does know. He has asked himself as much, questioned his own foolish presumption, played and replayed the words over and over again. On any terms. At any time. A promise made in the heat of a moment, years past. Years of rule, of resignation, of compromise. Years spent in two worlds separate but no less strange.
He says, "Then I shall return to Adrestia and throw myself on your mercy."
Hilda releases his hand. Her voice is a little stronger as she wrinkles her nose at him. "Good thing you’re sucking up now, I guess. Assuming we still have a roof over our heads when you get back."
He should have asked before now. "You—have no trouble, surely?"
"What? Us? Oh, please. We’ll be fine." It rings true. Hilda waves a hand as she shifts on her chaise, easing the weight onto her good hip. "We’ve got plenty in the bank and it’s not like Holst is gonna lose his job." General Goneril, Commander of the Locket: inclined by birth, earned by merit. "It’s just going to—" Her voice wavers, just a little. "It’s just going to suck, being the useless spinster aunt."
He leans forward, heedless, and grasps her hand. "If I don’t return within—you must come. You must. Even if you cannot stay."
The tears brim, spill over, trickling down her cheek. She wipes them away with an angry sniff. "Look what you made me do, Lorenz, honestly."
He squeezes her hand and does not let go. Says, from his heart, "You have my deepest regrets."
"I better." A pale indent, where her teeth dig into her lip. "I’ll—I’m really going to..."
Her hand in his is small, fine, and smooth; still capable of delivering a knockout blow or crafting a gossamer braid. "And I you. As—" He takes a breath. "As I will no doubt have reason to do more and more by the day, when I have no means but myself to bring our friend to account."
A moment, where he's afraid it's too acute, too poignant, and—Hilda smiles. A smile that transforms her face, that makes them both young again: children on the cusp of the most transformative years of their lives.
"Make him work for it," says the daughter of House Goneril.
* * *
The ship makes port at dawn. From there, Lorenz is prepared to search out an inn, orchestrate his approach. He should have known better than to bother. A messenger is waiting at the foot of the gangway.
"Count Gloucester?" the man says, in a manner that makes it clear he knows exactly to whom he speaks.
"My name is Gloucester," Lorenz replies, he thinks naturally. "I have no title."
"I beg your pardon." The man speaks perfectly accented Fódlani; no doubt one of the carefully cultivated crop of handpicked agents. He has likely spent considerable time in the Empire. Perhaps even in Gloucester itself. "If you would follow me...?"
Lorenz has nothing to gain by putting up a petty show of resistance just to prove a point. He follows.
He is too exhausted by the voyage, too unsteady on his own feet, to take in more than the barest impressions of the city. Too caught up in what might be waiting. Wide boulevards, half-empty; startling architecture; intriguing glimpses past canopies, down narrow streets, there and gone again.
As they pass through the city, snatches of sound catch his ear. Here and there a familiar word. He didn’t begin to study the language until a year—eighteen months—ago, when the date of the edict was set. As if, before, he could pretend to himself that he wasn’t going to do it. As it was, the best he could do in the Imperial Administrative Region of Gloucester was a series of half-incomprehensible conversations with local traders and shopkeepers, a brief course of study with one enterprising Almyran university graduate. And now here he is with a handful of phrases and little more, embarking on a gamble as impetuous as it was inevitable.
Lorenz's guide leads them away from the main thoroughfare, down a twisting side street. Through a gate. Not the palace: an unprepossessing residential complex. One among many hidden behind high walls, identical to its neighbors. Now down a long passageway; across a green and fountained courtyard. Into the building. Up a long spiral stair, down a corridor, to stop outside a door. The messenger knocks, perfunctory, and gestures Lorenz forward.
Lorenz's heart is racing, like a hummingbird's wings. Do not presume. There is more than one person of stature in the capital of Almyra. More pressing matters than one expatriate Fódlanite. It could be a spymaster; a deputy; a—
The King of Almyra looks up from his desk and says, "You're early."
Lorenz is forty-one years old. He has seen revolution, seen transformation, seen all that he thought he knew rewritten again and again. In all that time, there has been one constant. This singular and extranatural force, reordering the world and establishing itself at the center.
"Ah," Lorenz says. His voice wavers. "I’m afraid I—failed to send notice of my voyage."
"You know I keep track of my people." That familiar possessive, a foolish thing to make his pulse leap. "It's a good thing, too. You were faster off the mark than I thought you'd be."
So even he did not see that Lorenz was—this foolish, this sentimental. This weak, to an idea, a flickering light in the tunnel growing stronger and stronger with every step toward the end of his long march in the charge of duty.
Lorenz says, "Perhaps I have presumed too much."
"You didn't presume a damn thing. I told you, didn’t I?"
The King—Claude—rises from his desk. Lorenz is rooted in place, immobilized, as he crosses the room. Comes to a stop before him, inches away.
Quietly he says, "You made it, Lorenz."
Lorenz stills his hands against the tremors. He must be careful; he must control himself. He must not crumble.
"You saw it all the way through."
He must not—
Claude says, "I always knew you could."
This is what brings Lorenz to his knees, broken open, emptied like a blown eggshell. The arm over the curve of his shoulders and back keeps him in place, braces him against the shudders—spasms—wracking his frame. Not tears. Dry convulsions, the physical reaction of a body that has refused too much, for too long. He clutches at Claude’s arms, too shattered for shame, too desperate for restraint. He clutches, a spar of wood in a raging torrent, and Claude lets him.
It is some time before the shudders still. Before the trembling dies away. It does, eventually, and when it does the arms around his back loosen, fall away. The space between them opens.
Lorenz clasps his hands behind his back. Stands up straight, spine erect. Meets Claude's brilliant green eyes direct, head on, knife against bone.
There is no pretending now. Not in front of this man. Not any more.
Claude takes in Lorenz's posture, his expression, his gaze. His voice, when he speaks, is infinitely gentle.
"What do you say, Lorenz," he says. "Ready to build a new world?"
Lorenz's mouth trembles with his smile.
"It would be my honor," he says. "Your Majesty."