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He’s nothing like Kip thought.
The first glimpse Cliopher gets of His Radiancy, the occasion of him swearing his fealty notwithstanding, consists of the Sun-on-Earth’s turned back as he paces up and down his office.
Anxiety grips Cliopher at once—and yet he knows he’s not late, because he made sure to be there a quarter bell earlier and then drove himself insane waiting, because presuming to arrive before his appointed time could be as great an offence as arriving after.
The last five minutes, Cliopher thinks, surely didn’t count, if one accounted for the time it would take to make the appropriate obeisance and set up his working kit.
And he couldn’t stand the wait any longer.
So it’s five minutes to the hour when he knocks on the doors to the inner sanctum, the place where Zunidh’s beating heart and living soul resides. It’s five minutes minus several agonising seconds when the doors open for him, and he sees, for just one moment, a man pacing in something like agitation.
Cliopher stands there, heartbeat jackrabbiting, as the doors shut behind him again. It is a gentle sound, the hinges no doubt oiled—or maybe magicked—to perfection, and yet it booms and echoes in his ears.
He stands for too long, until His Radiancy has turned to assess him, until a guard has formally announced Cliopher’s arrival, and only then remembers to fall into the obeisance.
Etiquette is not, has never been, his strong suit, as evidenced by his visible, obvious delay, and yet. And yet. He has practised this, of course. Every one of his attempts felt stilted and awkward. Yet now he lowers himself to the ground and thinks I went to sit at the feet of the Sun, and something in him stills.
He can’t be sure how long he remains like this, and the rightness he feels battles with the very real anxiety that comes from knowing the candidate before him was dismissed before he even had a chance to serve their lord.
Finally, the words come like an unexpected blessing. “Rise and take your seat.”
Cliopher’s knees protest the move, and the fine tremble in his legs isn’t helping matters. After he makes it to the desk, he sinks with great relief into the familiar task of setting out his tools, and he was right: the bells start to ring out just as he begins.
Another blessing: there are no questions, no social games of chess that he would surely fail. Instead His Radiancy paces, and he dictates.
And Cliopher does what he does best.
The time passes, almost—Cliopher doesn’t dare call the atmosphere companionable, but there is a certain harmony to it.
Cliopher knows that the Master of Offices has set him up to fail, that Princess Indrogan has given him up. And yet he dares, mutinously, to think: I could be good at this.
He dares to think that perhaps the Sun on Earth might keep him, after the row of prospective secretaries sent away.
And then.
“—the Vonyabe,” His Radiancy says.
Kip’s heart sinks.
It’s not His Radiancy’s fault, of course. Nothing could be His Radiancy’s fault, according to the official policy, but in this case it’s true—everyone, every single person calls it the Vonyabe, so there would be no way for him to know.
And every single person he’s heard do so, Kip has corrected.
Cliopher Mdang of Tahivoa hasn’t come this far just to—to—
“I beg your pardon, Glorious and Illustrious One?”
Kip knows it’s overkill as soon as the words leave his mouth, but he doesn’t let himself wince.
His Radiancy repeats the word, and he appears as surprised that Kip dared to speak up as Kip himself feels. “It is in the former Imperial Province of the Wide Seas,” he adds.
He doesn’t know, Kip reminds himself, he can’t know.
And His Radiancy has a right—a duty—he deserves to know the correct name of every area that falls under his rule, imperial or otherwise.
“Ah, yes, the Vangavaye-ve,” Kip says, lightly, so lightly.
As if it’s inconsequential.
As if these aren’t the most important, and quite possibly last words he speaks in his life.
If he dies here, at the feet of the Sun, Kip Mdang will die an Islander.
“The Vangavaye-ve, then,” says the Lord of Rising Stars, the man who shapes truths with his words, and his pronunciation is careful and precise.
Kip’s heart soars.
He remains so elated, so distracted, that it’s hard to tell what other blunders he might make during this—interview, because that’s what it is. He is aware, distantly, that he should be putting his best foot forward: but while he tries his best to be careful, despite the joyous riptide in his heart, to Kip that has always meant doing his job and not acting out social scripts of grovelling and deference.
And His Radiancy… there is no other word for it. His Radiancy sets a trap. He lulls Cliopher into, if not a false sense of security, then at least an inexcusable courage.
Little by little, he lets every transgression go by, until for the grand finale he throws Cliopher an opening: such a perfect, irresistible line, that begs for an answer as easily as a quote from the Lays.
And Cliopher can’t not take it.
Somehow, he finds himself joking at the Last Emperor—no, not at—with, because the Emperor jokes back.
Cliopher has no choice but to be delighted.
“Oh, splendid!” he exclaims.
And wholly unable to pretend he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he lifts his eyes to meet the lion gaze of the mages of old.
Many things happen at once, in a condensed pocket of time Cliopher later will fail and fail to pick apart.
He is aware of the lack of pain, of the fact that no darkness instantly engulfs him.
He is aware of his laughter dying on his lips and, because he was looking, the mirth fading from His Radiancy’s eyes.
He is aware of his own piercing horror.
He is aware of the starkness of the difference, when His Radiancy’s face morphs into an expression of impenetrable serenity. It was only the smallest hint of laughter, a sliver of sunlight through the curtains; yet the change couldn’t be more absolute.
He is aware of his own eyes filling up with tears without his permission.
He falls into the obeisance more to hide them away than anything else; it doesn’t occur to him to beg for forgiveness.
His Radiancy dismisses Cliopher, and Cliopher all but flees.
He spends the night sleepless, terrified—he can’t permit his eyes to close for the fear he’ll open them to nothing. He wishes His Radiancy would have ordered Cliopher’s execution then and there, and spared him from the treacherous urge to hope, that persists even when all logic and good sense know otherwise.
He thinks of his family back home and of the portrait of Artorin Damara in Saya Dorn’s house. He wonders if this is the fate he felt so urgently called to; to gaze upon the Emperor’s eyes just once.
Cliopher tries, with heart and mind, to make some peace with it.
He doesn’t even notice his missing kit until it’s returned to him in the morning, together with the absurd, impossible news that he’s been appointed as His Radiancy’s personal secretary.
When he sees the Sun-on-Earth again, he’s greeted with a “good morning,” as if—
It’s not exactly as if His Radiancy is pretending yesterday’s events never happened.
When Cliopher, having clung desperately to decorum and propriety for as long as he could possibly manage, is unable to resist glancing up for the second day in a row, His Radiancy is looking away with enough intent to indicate that perhaps he wasn’t, a moment ago.
And when Cliopher ducks his head to focus on his writing, he would swear he can feel the heavy but, as it so stands, no longer lethal golden gaze on him.
It is impossible to conceive he’s been spared, much less given this position, despite his every fatal mistake.
Yet it is just as unthinkable to entertain the idea that it might be because of them.