Chapter Text
It had been many years since Rial Lord Irridis was last interviewed for any job. He had not really expected this to ever happen again. Could not, in truth, quite believe it was happening now.
Vobu, his chief attendant, seemed equally bemused. He fussed over the choice of robes: something appropriate to the Upper Secretariat, obviously, and with the Irridis house colours, and not overdressed (no half court costume here); sir was a subtle man and deserved subtlety.
Rial, who knew how much he relied on Vobu for all matters of taste, was certainly not going to argue with him. It was not as if either of them had anyone else left in the Palace who would care. It was not as if he would ever say that aloud, when his attendant put so much time and effort into perfecting his ensembles. He wished, with weary familiarity, that he was more the kind of person who enjoyed clothes. Vobu deserved more than this placid acceptance.
The usual mental corollary - that Vobu deserved better in general - also, as usual, went unsaid. The pair of them had been the only members of house Irridis to survive the Fall of Astandalas; Rial as the disfavoured second son (for all his family’s greatness, it had been abundantly clear to Astandalas that they would gain no advantage from inviting him to any of their parties), and Vobu as the lowest footman in the pecking order, the one who had to miss the Silverheart festivities on his account.
“Go, then, leave me to it,” young Rial had snapped, that evening, cold with anger, “I won’t tell them.” And young Vobu had refused, with sullen resentment that he could see now was justified. What right had he to tell one of the household to neglect their assigned duties? His parents would have been furious, if they found out, and whatever the consequences for nineteen year old Rial, the outcome for Vobu - five years younger, a nobody, entirely reliant on House Irridis for food, clothing, prospects, and protection - would have been far worse.
It had been bitter, in the years that followed, knowing that Vobu blamed Rial for their survival, and hated him, and hated himself, and yet would not leave him. Rial had offered, more than once, any form of support or sponsorship he needed, and yet Vobu refused to go. He would not leave Rial in the chaotic aftermath of the Fall, nor when it became clear that the majority of the Irridis lands and fortune were lost forever on Ysthar, nor when Rial called an end to the search for his family and considered just - giving up. Returning his empty title to the sleeping Emperor and going - well, the lack of destinations was the problem, wasn’t it?
Rial Irridis had his skills, but they were the skills of a steward, a trusted manager (“a conniving tradesman, a stinking merchant, a measly paper-pusher, my son?” his father’s voice still hissed in his ear, even now). They were not skills well suited to survival as a travelling stranger in the magic-rent world of Zunidh, a place he had never imagined visiting before the cataclysm landed the Palace here.
And so he had stayed, and Vobu had stayed with him, making the best of the life they found in Solaara. It should not have been a relief, to be shorn away from his wealth and his noble family, but it was. Princess Indrogan and Lady Jivane did not care for the glory or otherwise of House Irridis; they were happy to keep a competent senior manager in the Upper Secretariat, and there was nobody left now to needle him for his fussy ways, for his inability to hold a sword, for his delight in numbers and commerce. Only Vobu remained to disappoint, and he offered no spoken commentary, merely insisted that as long as Rial needed an attendant, he could not leave.
Vobu, with great ceremony, placed his square and saggy formal hat of rank neatly on top of his close-cropped bureaucrat’s hair. Rial Irridis regarded his reflection and found it adequate to the occasion.
“Thank you,” he said, “I look magnificent.” He caught the pleased quirk of Vobu’s lips in the mirror.
“Always, my lord,” his attendant said, then, hesitantly, “this new position… it is at the Treasury?”
“Lord Loveless is Treasurer now,” said Rial, “and they’ve asked me to speak about a role. I believe it would be with them.”
“And why they do not make you Treasurer I do not understand,” said Vobu, with a sharper-than-necessary tug to settle the neckline of Rial’s robes, “you are Lord Irridis!”
“Thank you, but I think Lord Loveless is an excellent choice,” said Rial, mildly, which was true, and not entirely honest. He did think that Loveless would be an excellent Treasurer. He did also think that he, himself, could do as well - if not better. But if Lord Irridis was made Treasurer, he would know in his bones that it was because he was Lord Irridis, the last scion of a noble house. It would not be because Rial knew his way around government finances.
He stood up, turned, and leaned on the back of his chair, watching as Vobu tidied away the accoutrements of his trade. “Do you think I should take a job with them?”
Vobu was folding a swathe of silk with a series of small flourishes. “You are surely on track to be made senior minister at Trade now. Why take a junior post?”
“Junior ministers at the Treasury are as powerful - more powerful - than the head of a smaller department,” Rial pointed out.
“Yes, but you are used to charting your own course, my lord,” said Vobu.
“I suppose I am, at that,” he replied. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, my lord,” said Vobu, firmly putting him in his place. Rial kept his sigh to himself. Vobu had unbent enough to talk freely with him, and share his thoughts, and he was thankful. It was more than he had had for many decades.
The Treasurer’s apartments were familiar, and so was the new Treasurer, although they had been a junior minister most of the time Rial had known them. Lord Loveless was new to their title, which went with the job, and rumour had it that they were wading through an astonishing mess that the recently departed Lady Baravan had left in her wake. They were also, despite the upheaval, as friendly and welcoming as ever, asking after his department, and his household, and whether he had found much time to go fishing, lately.
Rial found himself tensing up with a totally unexpected anxiety, sitting up straighter than was necessary on the low comfy chair, hardly touching the fine jasmine tea that the Treasurer’s assistant had set out for them both. He was conscious that Loveless’s appearance was slightly dishevelled, and their face strained, though their manner was easy.
“You look like you’ve found less time to go fishing than I have,” he blurted out, which was totally incorrect for a Lord of Astandalas but apparently the right thing to say here, because Loveless stopped the inconsequential chatter and looked directly at him for the first time, with a more genuine, much wearier smile.
“It’s been more panning through the muck for gold, I’m afraid,” they said.
“It’s that bad?” said Rial.
Loveless sighed and wilted slightly with it, releasing that correct pose for a more natural slump in their shoulders. “I knew it was going to be bad,” they said, “Sayo Mdang started his audit programme here for an excellent reason. Baravan told him that she had never once taken inventory of the contents of the Treasury, if you’ll believe it, and didn’t even have the wit to know she was admitting to dereliction of duty.” At Rial’s involuntary noise of disgust, Loveless grinned weakly, “she also made the mistake of trying to butter Mdang up somehow. I don’t know the details.”
“Ah. Well, I can see why she had to go, then,” said Rial. He remembered Sayo Mdang’s deep suspicion of flattery from the sadly too-brief months when Mdang was working in his office, and again from that unfortunate incident with the oily rich woman - Lady Whatserface - who had made the mistake of attempting to persuade him to mis-sell financial products with her.
“And that brings me to why I asked to speak with you,” said Loveless. “Sayo Mdang felt it would be best - he was concerned that it might be difficult for you to discuss this with him directly - but he is looking for somebody willing to join his private office and help coordinate the audit programme.”
Rial froze. The tea slopped out of the cup he had just lifted from its saucer, no doubt doing terrible things to the sleeve of his silk robe. “Sayo Mdang wants what?”
“He wants you,” said Loveless.
“But… but why?” was all Rial could manage. He put the mug back down on the saucer with both hands, and clasped them together - an unmanly habit his mother had spent years trying to whip out of him - and found that he was nearly glaring at Loveless, whose eyebrows had shot up at this reaction. “Why me?”
He had tried - he had tried so hard - not to lean on the Irridis name. He had volunteered for the emergency posting to Trade after the Fall, when Princess Indrogan was desperate. With the gates between the worlds closed and much of Zunidh unreachable his remit was unrecognisable from Astandalan days. His sharper-edged colleagues left him to the Ministry of Trade with disdain; it was a backwater for a career, he understood that. But the Palace needed trade, not for prestige but for survival, and Rial understood his own value. The Solaaran horizon might be low, and close, and the safe zone ringed with famine and war, but within this constrained field he could support enterprise and exchange, identify the needs and surpluses, and do his part to keep the Palace alive.
It was not that different from the first challenge he had embraced, as a young man, stewarding the back country estates where his parents had sent him to ‘harden up’. Rial was terrified of horses, and resolutely skived off the training grounds, and he was perilously clumsy with any kind of physical labour, but he had learned, up in the mountains, that he had other skills. He could see patterns in the records, and anticipate demand, and organise people to make the most of each season. Within a year he had doubled the profit margins of the estates, and the bite went out of his people’s mockery, and he was touched and a little awed to find that they were covering for him with his family.
There were fewer living souls in the whole of Solaara after the Fall than there had been spread across the three mountain valleys controlled by House Irridis in the Vale of Astandalas, and Rial had played a small but essential role in keeping them all alive. He was proud of that, and sometimes it gave him a savage little glow of satisfaction, to think that he had been more use to the Lord Emperor with his scorned love of ledgers than any of his brothers could have been with all their swords and swagger.
The tides had shifted and Lord Irridis, junior minister for Trade, had been shifted with them. He had taken up the baton of financial reporting with equal fervour, recognising that the records at a time of disaster were, if anything, even more important than those kept in peacetime. He had not been reconciled to House Irridis sinking into ignominious irrelevance, whatever he said to Vobu, he had delighted in it.
And now - his wits were catching up with him, and he remembered that Sayo Mdang was an outsider to the court, and largely oblivious to the games of favour and status. He would not be asking for Rial because he wanted Lord Irridis. Which meant…
“He told me that you were the only person he ever met in the Upper Secretariat who understood the true importance of accountability,” said Loveless. Their gentleness told Rial just how much of his discomposure was plain on his face. He forced himself to fold his astonishment back under that mild mask that ensured his survival at court.
“That seems... remarkable,” he said.
“He told me that you were remarkable, too.” Loveless quirked a smile. “For cooking up that scheme to get your books audited at Trade. And - he didn’t say this, but we all know it’s true - for giving him enough quiet backing to go after the Master of Offices, that first time. You could have shut that down with a word, you know, and you didn’t.”
All of these things were true, and Loveless was not someone given to cruel practical jokes, and they were regarding him - Rial, not Lord Irridis, but Rial - with steady, slightly amused, respect. The shock of the offer was wearing off, now, and he was thinking about it, would have to think further, and yet… he had cast a line often enough to know that twist and tug when the hook was set.
He needed time to think.
“Cliopher sayo Mdang joined my office because I won his services from Lady Kuyulush in a game of cards,” he said, to cover his confusion, and was glad to startle a disbelieving chortle out of Loveless. “I appreciate his courtesy in asking you to approach me in a more, er, traditional manner. I am interested, but I will need some time to consider, and to speak with him directly, of course.”
Loveless nodded. “Of course. He’s looking for an answer this week, if possible, and wanted to speak with you directly too… I could lend you a deck of cards, if that would help?” they added, eyes glinting with wicked humour.
“Not necessary,” said Rial, “besides, you’ve got a lot of recruiting to do here, haven’t you? So no doubt you’re going to need them yourself." He smiled. "Tell Lady K that I sent you, she’ll be delighted.”
Loveless was almost as deeply dark-skinned as the high aristocracy, for all that their background was obscure, but Rial was almost sure that they were blushing at the very idea. Not for the first time, he blessed Lura and her gift for rattling people. “I’ll bear that in mind, Irridis” said Loveless, and switched back into the register of high court formality to show him out of the Treasurer’s apartments.
Rial was hardly aware of the walk back to his office, chewing over the implications and ramifications of this extraordinary offer. It made sense - of course it made sense - to run audits of the government from a perch tucked right in under the shelter of the Lord Emperor’s golden aura. The Treasury had certainly lost the skills and the practice, or rather, Loveless needed them urgently to attend to other problems.
Things were changing, even in Trade. The stack of updates and reports waiting on his desk was full of it. The Emperor was spending a great deal of time out on the terraces that overlooked the Solamen Fens, was reportedly doing some mysterious thing that would make them safe for travellers. If the animals pulling the great barges along the River Dwahaii were able to use the paths on both sides of the river, the traffic into Solaara from the coast could double, which would mean… and that was only one paper, one initiative. The Ouranatha had released their store of sanctified salt to preserve fish caught along the coast, and Rial Irridis had tracked the price of fish in the Palace budget as it fell, and thought of all those people in the market, finding the food they needed at a price they could suddenly afford… and the Administrative Office was no more, and he was in the middle of a round of recruitment where he could offer the salaries he needed out of his own budget to attract trained accountants.
Sayo Mdang, Imperial Secretary, was changing the world. It was, in all honesty, a little daunting. He felt his heart beat a little faster as he set the reports aside. He wanted to be part of this. He did. But he needed to test it, first. He had been at court too long to trust his own reactions.
His secretary found him some time with Domina Badgestock that afternoon. Rial went down to her office, because it was beneath his dignity as Lord Irridis to do so, and also because it would be cruel to ask a woman with breathing difficulties to trek up the stairs to his office.
They met in the outer offices of the Treasury, low down in the main block of the Palace, where the light was low and slanting throughout the day, and the architects had done wondrous things with greenish grey and silver marble.
“What - brings you here?” the Domina asked.
“The new Imperial Secretary, in a way,” he told her.
“In what way?” she said, sounding a little suspicious.
Her sceptical expression softened a little when Rial explained about his job offer, but returned in full force when he finished by saying, “I know he was working for me, technically, but most of what he did was in partnership with you - so I wanted to know how you felt about working with him. And whether you would be interested in joining too, if I do accept his offer?"
“No,” she said, flatly, “absolutely not. Don’t get me wrong, I like Cliopher,” she added, hastily, “but it was difficult enough working with the man.” She paused to recover her breath following that emphatic statement. Rial waited patiently until she was comfortable enough to finish her thought, “there is no incentive on Zunidh - or any other world - that could persuade me to work for him.”
“What made it difficult?”
“Cliopher Mdang is a force of nature,” she said, “I’ve never met anyone so - enamoured - with his work. He hardly rests. We went through everything - in the Archives, everything I have ever studied, every principle for financial reporting, in half a year. He never asks you to take the papers home - but he works at such a pace that - you can only keep up with him that way. I am sure he will do great things - as Imperial Secretary - I will study them one day. But I want to go home. When the Alinorel gate is restored. Before I get much older.” She smiled at him, and he thought how lovely her long silvery hair was in the sunlight. “I will send you - everything that Tara has on auditing. If you take the job.”
“You think I might?” He raised an eyebrow.
She raised one back at him. “I have given enough - careers advice to my students to know when someone has already made their decision.”
She was… not wrong, thought Rial, as he ambled slowly back towards his office. He had needed to hear her views, but he had not been surprised by them, or deterred. Domina Badgestock had her career as a professor of accounting to return to, if she could get back to Alinor (if her part of Alinor had survived the Fall, if the University of Tara still stood by the Circle Sea, if, if, if).
He had so little, beyond his work, and what remained of his household. He knew how important an audit could be. He knew that he could run audits for the Emperor objectively, skillfully, and - it would be a way to be part of things, again, to serve the government of Zunidh in his way.
The thought of how furious his father would be at the very idea leant it a certain extra appeal.