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The surplus of free time Kip had enjoyed during the time before his alleged death and subsequent retirement was now a distant memory.
Officially, he held no role, having formally returned rule over Zunidh to his Radiancy in a court ceremony that lasted a modest three hours.
Unofficially, he found himself acting very much as a taná to the entire Palace of Stars. Taná of the world, Suzen’s portrait named him, but that was an abstract title and this a very real, tangible preoccupation.
It seemed every day a new problem regarding some aspect of the Jubilee celebrations or the Ceremony of Succession arose, and somebody just had to throw in the idea of a parade around Solaara to boot, which brought on its own security issues Rhodin was keen to remind him of.
On top of that, his Radiancy spent most of his days in a deep trance or in counsel with the Mother of Mountains, trying to ensure the new Lady of Zunidh would enjoy a freedom and flexibility within her post that he’d never had. Of course, she never had been or would be Empress, which eased things considerably; but his Radiancy still worried that the spell binding her to the magic of Zunidh would act like a chain.
It took up so much of his lord’s time and thoughts that, when it could be helped, Kip didn’t want to bother him with other matters.
And so, the headaches were making a valiant return.
Kip didn’t truly mind, knowing it was temporary, but he did try to be more… regulated, than he had been before. He told himself there were people in place to handle the arising difficulties, excellent bureaucrats who had already surpassed his own dreams and ambitions, that the final responsibility did not rest with him.
And that helped, somewhat. He did not give orders, he did not take final decisions. He just… talked with people, and in talking they came upon the solutions themselves. He basked in pride for his successors, for Aioru especially.
But there was this tiny, insidious voice in his head that whispered nothing could be allowed to go wrong. This was his lord’s retirement. This was the last step in Fitzroy’s long battle for freedom. If anything were to compromise the legitimacy of either succession or retirement, Kip would be unable to blame anyone but himself.
It was, in a way the first stage of his own retirement hadn’t been, extraordinarily difficult to hold himself within the confines of the position of the taná and not try to micromanage everything. Kiri dutifully informed him whenever he was getting too neurotic, and Ludvic, Rhodin or sometimes Conju distracted him during mealtimes, but his friends were as anxious as he was.
Six days before the Ceremony, he found himself alone in his apartments and mentally calculating whether there was any point in taking one of Domina Audry’s headache cures when he knew for a fact within an hour it would be wasted, when there was a sudden and startling tap at his window.
The tap, he discovered, had come from the beak of a crow. As Kip stared at it in faint amusement and perplexion, the crow squished its head against the window impatiently. It appeared, strange a sight though it was, to be wearing a backpack.
Kip opened the window and watched the crow fly a victorious round around his room. “Fitzroy?” he said uncertainly.
Sure enough, the crow transformed into a man, and the man threw his now much larger bag to the ground.
“Get in,” Fitzroy said. “No time to explain.”
Kip cast an uncertain glance towards the bag, unzipped it, and glanced again to Fitzroy for confirmation. Fitzroy nodded, sharp and affirmative. Kip hesitantly placed one foot inside the bag.
He knew, in theory, that the interior was much larger than the exterior, but he hadn’t thought its capacities extended that far. He placed his second foot inside, and suddenly he was no longer touching the floor through it–he was falling, until he landed unceremoniously on a small nest of pillows. He had a moment to wonder where the light permitting him to see from inside a bag was coming from, until he noticed one of the mage-lights much like he’d used for his studies back in the Vangavaye-ve, except brighter and grander, hovering in the air.
There were a plethora of objects around him, some familiar, some new, some practical, some fanciful. In his immediate vicinity, Kip could see everything he might need to make tea. His vision extended for what seemed like a good few feet, and then gradually faded into darkness. It was… quite comfortable, but no less odd for it.
There was the barest hint of movement coming from–the outside, he supposed, and he spent some bewildered moments or minutes trying to reconcile this experience with his own humble, non-magical understanding of physical space. He was nowhere near close to a satisfying conclusion when a second light source appeared, and a hand entered his field of vision.
Kip grasped it, and Fitzroy pulled him out of the bag. He stumbled a little for having ground below his feet again, noting that he and Fitzroy stood on a rooftop; somewhere in the Levels, judging by the buildings surrounding them.
“That,” Kip said, “was bizarre.”
He was not dizzy, nor did the earth seem unsteady underneath him as it did sometimes after a long time at sea. But he felt like he should be feeling some effect after being–shrunk down? Or was the bag simply magnified in a way eyes could not perceive? He truly had not reached a conclusion.
“That seems to have worked well,” Fitzroy nodded with satisfaction. “Everything stay in its place in there? No stray teacups falling on your head?”
“Well, no,” Kip said. He considered asking about the logistics of it, and decided some things could remain outside his understanding and that he trusted Fitzroy to know what he was doing, even if he said things like this seems to have worked well, which implied he was experimenting with it.
He considered, also, asking about what emergency had brought them here by those unconventional means and with no time for Fitzroy to explain.
But Fitrzoy had lied down on the roof tiles and was gazing with apparent satisfaction at the clear sky. Kip shook his head in bemusement and joined him.
Look first, listen first, ask questions later.
Silence stretched between them, but it was the companionable kind. Kip thought about how hard Fitzroy– his lord–had been working these days, and decided that a few minutes of doing nothing but idly watching the movement of the city below them was quite in order.
Then a horrible suspicion snuck up on him.
“Fitzroy,” he said slowly.
“My lord Mdang,” Fitzroy said without looking at him, quite innocently in his best Fitzroy Angursell tone.
“Fitzroy.”
Fitzroy let out a quiet laugh. “Those poor junior secretaries,” he said wryly, but didn’t seem interested in elaborating his point.
“Did you bring me here so I would take a break?” Kip demanded.
Fitzroy shrugged and turned his head to grin at him. “You tell me. How’s the waterline?”
“How’s yours?”
“High,” Fitzroy deadpanned. “Which is why I’m out here with you, instead of in there.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the Palace of Stars. “Think of it as a diplomatic manoeuvre, Kip. You can make me take a break for the low, low price of taking one yourself.”
Kip winced. He had been worrying, and making perhaps not so subtle allusions to it. Even if he hadn’t been, Fitzroy knew him.
“I see it’s your turn to be wise today,” he said lightly. “Still, couldn’t you have warned me? I would have come along.”
“I know,” Fitzroy said, fond. “I also know you’d have spent more time planning it and calculating the least inconvenient time possible for you to take fifteen minutes to yourself than you would have actually relaxing. Abduction was my only recourse.”
“Abduction?” Kip laughed. A thought struck him. “Oh no, Fitzroy. What if somebody comes looking for me? I didn’t alert anyone I’d be gone. It might… it might cause some alarm.”
If possible, Fitzroy’s grin widened. “Oh, might it? The former Viceroy and Lord Chancellor of Zunidh, disappearing under mysterious circumstances? For the second time in one year? Whatever makes you think that, my dear Kip?”
“Is this supposed to reassure me?”
“No; you’re right.” There was an unmistakable spark of mischief in Fitzroy’s eyes. “Perhaps we should send along a note to inform the Palace of what has happened…”
Kip thought he might deeply regret what he was about to say next, but seeing Fitzroy so playful he could do nothing but indulge him.
“Alright. And what has happened?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?” Fitzroy looked back to the sky. “What would make for a good story? I remember your bargaining at the House of the Sun, don’t pretend you don’t have the inclination for this sort of thing.”
“I’ve seen you composing,” Kip shot back. “And I see the look in your eyes. Don’t pretend you don’t have a story already.”
Fitzroy looked absurdly smug at that, whether it was at the set down, the being known, or the certainty that he would have a narrative ready to be spun.
“Well,” he said, pure delight in his voice, “if you insist on asking me, I think that the infamous rebel Fitzroy Angursell abducting the Viceroy of Zunidh would make for a shocking tale for the good citizens of Solaara.”
“You’re pardoned,” Kip pointed out flatly. “And I’m retired.”
“I’m an irredeemable, ungrateful ruffian who went back to his old ways,” Fitzroy returned in much the same tone, though the corner of his mouth lifted. “And you are still the most beloved, and second most politically valuable person in all of Zunidh. I couldn’t ask for a better abductee.”
Kip felt himself flush but gave Fitzroy his most stern look. “I’m going to have to ask you to strike that from the record. No backdoor self-deprecation allowed when you compliment me.”
“It doesn’t count if it’s a fact,” Fitzroy complained, and Kip pinched him.
Quite naturally and unthinkingly, like he would do for any beloved friends who were being silly about themselves.
Fitzroy stared at him. “Ow,” he said somewhat belatedly, and rubbed his arm in clear wonder.
“This kidnapping, then,” Kip said. “What is your goal? Ransoming me for money? Disrupting the Jubilee proceedings?”
“Oh, I think perhaps both.” Fitzroy’s tone was casual and airy in a way that made Kip narrow his eyes. “I must confess I’ve hit a snag, however.”
The bait was right there. Kip sighed fondly and took it.
“Which is?”
“It’s only… Now that I’ve met the Viceroy of Zunidh for myself, I don’t think I’m willing to return him. For any price.”
Kip had expected something aimed to discompose him, of course, knew Fitzroy saw the act of it as an art he was perfecting. He had been reasonably prepared for any poetic extravagance Fitzroy might come up with.
But this wasn’t reasonable, nor was it fair.
Fitzroy Angursell was not–for all that he was lovingly thought of as a rascal, he had the reputation of someone who rescued damsels in distress, not of being the one who abducted them.
Yet Kip asked himself how many people might have secretly dreamt of the great bard stealing them away to a life of adventure that their own sense of duty and responsibility would have never allowed them to choose.
He had not dreamt of that–in his most fanciful fantasies, he’d chanced upon the Red Company in a great hour of need, and he had been the one to provide a solution to their problem, thus earning a place among them.
And yet.
“I think,” Kip said, and his throat was parched, “I think my lord would exercise considerable effort to get me back.”
“What, the iguana?” Fitzroy shot back immediately, and that broke Kip out of his very strange moment, sending him into a fit of half-hysterical giggles. “Well, my lord Mdang, much as you’ve enchanted me, I can’t claim in all certainty I’d fight that thing for you.”
Kip laughed until he was tearing up, his mind treacherously summoning up the image of Fitzroy and the iguana circling one another in a formal duel.
“What if,” he tried as his giggles started to subside, “what if I beseeched you to return me for now, with a promise to run away with you after the Jubilee?”
“Oh, tempting. Very tempting,” Fitzroy said primly. “You’d need a token, naturally, proof of your sincerity.”
Kip tilted his head in consideration, mind already racing to meet the challenge clear in Fitzroy’s words. Traditionally the only such tokens he’d heard of were handkerchiefs or kisses, but surely he could come up with something a little more unique.
The trouble was that he had been quite unprepared for the excursion Fitzroy tricked him into, so he didn’t have very much on his person.
“I can do that,” he said, “but you’ll have to take me to the Imperial Gardens.”
“Hmm. Do you mean that, I wonder? Or is it simply a clever ruse to escape? Will you shout and alert the guard?”
Kip jutted out his chin, threw the challenge right back at Fitzroy. “And do you mean to tell me the great Fitzroy Angursell shies away from a little risk?”
“Oh, you are devastating,” Fitzroy said. It sounded like a compliment. “I think I will choose to believe you. I have always been that kind of fool.”
So Fitzroy flew them to the gardens, no backpack-related crises for Kip this time, only two crows landing quite unobtrusively next to the tui tree Kip had planted so many years ago.
He remembered the night of the comet, when he’d gazed upon this tree with his heart heavy with unnamed longing, waiting for his lord.
The tui trees bloomed, year after year–not with the promise of a return, but simply the wish of it.
He cut off a bud, not yet opened, and secured it to Fitzroy’s lapel.
Mentally he calculated again the time left until the Jubilee celebrations and the Succession were finished, and well, maybe it wouldn’t align precisely, but Fitzroy was always very insistent on the importance of poetic expression, how it sometimes went so far as to affect reality itself, quite like magic.
“When this flower blooms,” Kip said, “I will go with you.”