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The world faded in slowly, like the horizon lightening at dawn. There were people crowded around him, hands adjusting his clothing with impersonal deftness. Someone was speaking nearby, but the words were lost in the hubbub of the room, some vast machinery humming behind him. He stared down at the person crouched at his feet as they tied the laces of a pair of gleaming shoes.
“Prince Osvald. Prince Osvald. Pay attention,” a voice said sharply. Nails dug into the tendons of his hand, and he gasped, trying to yank himself out of someone’s grip. He failed. A dark-eyed person with immaculately combed hair and a grey jacket gripped his wrist tightly, the nails of their other hand dug into the back of his hand. “That’s better,” the person said, looking at him with a mixture of displeasure and the attention given to an interesting bug. “Listen closely. There was an incident, and your former self had an accident. The process of getting you ready for your appearances had some memory impacts, but the important thing for you to know is that you are getting married today. All you need to do is say ‘I do’ when you’re prompted.”
Osvald? Was that his name? He was a prince? Osvald swallowed, swaying in place as someone placed a hand at the small of his back and laced him into a corset. “Former self—did something—was I killed? By—by who?”
The person in grey reached up and pinched the inside of his upper arm, a sharp bite of nails that made Osvald flinch.
“Ow—what?” he said helplessly, looking between the person in front of him and the figures fixing his clothes. None of the people dressing him would look at him.
“Let’s be clear, your highness,” the figure holding him said. They let go of his wrist and stepped forward to grip his chin as the dressers threaded Osvald’s arms into a shirt and started buttoning it up. “You are not a smart man, and problems have been caused by you getting interested in things that don’t concern you. What you need to do is what you’re told, and we’ll do the hard part. Then everything will run a lot smoother.” The person smiled, the expression crinkling their eyes with amusement that made something cold settle into Osvald’s stomach. “You just sit still and look pretty, alright?”
His chin was being held, he couldn’t move his head. Osvald tried to look around for anyone on his side and found no allies. No one was even looking at him, busy as they were with moving a gurney, actioning things on holo-projection tablets, and dressing him. The figures around him pulled gloves onto his hands, covering the red marks left by the grey figure’s nails. Osvald tried to take a deep breath and was stopped by the corset around his ribs. “Do as I’m told,” he repeated. He forced a smile at the person holding him. “Should be able to manage that, right?”
“Good boy,” they said. “Don’t let anyone know there’s been an incident.”
There were hands in his hair now, holding his head in place as they did something to do it. Osvald swallowed, and nodded, and held still.
The wedding was held in a stone chapel full of richly-dressed people. The weight of hundreds of eyes laid on him like so many pebbles, building up till he was slowly immobilized. Osvald tried to keep from being too visible as he glanced around.
“And over your years of growing closer together, we all knew that you were destined to be together in this life—and perhaps the next,” the officiant said. Osvald was not doing the best job of listening.
There was a mezzanine on the second story of this building, and he kept seeing snatches of movement up there. Were those figures on his side? If a sniper was up there, he was pretty sure they’d have a clean shot down to where he was in plain view on the stage. If someone wanted to kill him, someone else would stop them, right?
There was a beautiful figure across from him, gloved hands in his. His wife to be, the heavy embroidered cape across her shoulders a match for the velvet wrapping around him. A glittering circlet matched the weight on his head. Her blue eyes were intent behind sparkling makeup as she watched him.
“Do you, Osvald Hoffmann, take Alice Pryce to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Oh good, now he knew her name, that was good. Osvald’s thoughts had a tinge of hysteria he was trying to shove down. His lawfully wedded wife, and everything that came after. He wasn’t even sure of her hair colour, she was wearing a veil.
“I do,” he said, voice echoing in the space.
“Do you, Alice Pryce, take Osvald Hoffman to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“I do,” she said, and her voice was steady.
After the exit from the chapel they took him into another room and undressed him, changing him into another outfit. Less of a cape, no circlet, a different jacket. Once they’d fixed him to their satisfaction, another figure led him down a corridor, footfalls muffled on the carpet. There was movement behind him, and Osvald turned around with his eyes wide.
A figure in the same black and white as the figures who’d dressed him had hurried up the corridor behind him, and was gesturing in the other direction. “My prince, your flyer is this way,” she said.
The figure leading Osvald pressed their lips together, standing on his other side. “The dinner is this way, your highness.” They jerked their head the way they’d been going.
Osvald was frozen in place, eyes darting between both figures. Which person did he follow?
There was a little purple ribbon sewn to the edge of the new figure’s collar, he noticed. The slightest spot of colour. She nodded, eyes intent on him. “We were afraid after the accident—you might not be able to make it—but it’s so good to see you looking so healthy, your highness,” she said, looking at him as though waiting for a signal.
This person knew his former self, Osvald realized, frozen in place. This—this was something his former self had been arranging, something that was supposed to happen on his wedding day.
And did that mean he should follow the person with the purple ribbon, or the other person? His former self had died, after all.
There was a muffled hiss of compressed air, and the woman with the purple ribbon clapped a hand to the side of her neck as she collapsed. Osvald looked in horror at the figure in grey who had just appeared, now hiding some object under her jacket.
“Come along, your highness,” the figure who’d led Osvald here in the first place said. She jerked her head in the same direction she’d been travelling.
“Is she dead?” Osvald said, looking between the figure in grey as she approached and the crumpled figure on the carpet.
“It doesn’t matter,” the person who’d originally started leading him here said. They gestured Osvald further, away from the body of the person who’d been trying to take him somewhere, and the grey figure now bending over them. “Your wedding dinner, your highness.”
If he would have done better to go with the person with the purple ribbon, that option was closed now. Silent, Osvald followed the other person back down the corridor.
They gave him and his new wife a single oblong plate to share, with silverware for both of them at their own table on a dais. People in uniforms and richly-ornamented outfits stood up to make speeches as immaculate black and white waiters threaded their way between tables on the floor. Osvald couldn’t keep track of the speakers, they kept referring to people he didn’t know and events he didn’t recognize. He ate food when it was served to him and didn’t make any sudden moves.
Alice wasn’t eating, though. Osvald glanced at her. “Do you not like the food?”
“It’s fine,” she said. She pressed her lips together. “I’m not that hungry.”
“I mean, it’s not like it’s poisoned,” Osvald said, reaching for some kind of a joke, and then froze in place as she looked at him. That was not a good joke, he realized in a cold wash of regret. He shouldn’t make light of safety concerns, and if it was poisoned, would he even know? Poison tasted bitter, right? Had he eaten anything bitter? Was he already gone?
“Oh?” Alice tilted her head to the side, glittering earrings swinging around her jaw. “And you know this how?” She raised her eyebrows.
“I mean, I don’t know, I’m guessing.” Osvald tried a smile he didn’t feel. “I ate some and I haven’t died yet?”
She sniffed. “Well, theoretically there’s poison tasters.”
That had been a guess, Osvald realized, looking at her expression. She didn’t know, so he couldn't rely on her knowledge. He swallowed, mouth dry. “One would think.” God, he knew so little. There were figures on the outskirts of the room in grey jackets. Were they on his side?
“Hmmm.” Alice frowned at him. “You’re a big help.”
“It’s something I’ve always strived for in our relationship,” he said, deadpan, “being a helpful font of knowledge.”
Her eyes darted to his face, a touch of fear in her perfectly-made-up face. “We’ve met?”
Regret opened a pit below Osvald and he was in free-fall for a moment. He wasn’t supposed to let people know that he didn’t know. Had he done that wrong?
No, wait, the officiant had said that we’d known each other for years. He had definitely heard that.
Did she not know what was going on? From the stricken look on her face, Alice had had the same realization he’d had, and she was waiting for him to comment on it. And they were sitting at the front of the room in front of hundreds of people, observed in everything they did.
Osvald looked back down at their shared plate, poking at a fruit sauce that had been served with small rounds of meat. “Not sure what this is, but it was good. Cherries, I think.”
“You don’t know what food is being served at your wedding dinner?” Alice asked, dry.
Osvald risked a glance in her direction. She was asking about more than the menu. “I’m really stupid,” he said, to a snort of laughter from his wife. He turned his attention back to the food, trying to figure out how to say this. “Am I picking up from you that you are similarly—a little lost?”
Alice raised her eyebrows, a small smile turning the side of her mouth up. “Did you just call your wife stupid?”
An entirely different flavour of fear washed over him. Osvald stared at her, stricken. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t what I meant. I’m very—it was a slip of the tongue, I’m sorry.”
She laughed. Alice picked up her spoon and poked at the fruit sauce, fishing a fragment of cherry out of it. “I picked up what you meant,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to call you stupid,” Osvald said to her, genuinely regretful. “I’ve—I’ve only heard good things.”
The smile on her face was slightly wider. “Heard a lot of things?”
“I’d call it more of an enticing mystery,” Osvald told her.
“I love a good mystery,” Alice said. “Even better if you’ve got someone to solve it with.”
They were on the same side. He had an ally in this, maybe, this unknown future. “We should talk,” he said, thinking of the ribbon on that woman’s uniform. “Later.”
“You really know how to sell a girl on her wedding night,” Alice said, eating the fragment of fruit on her spoon.
Osvald paused, hand poised over his silverware. Right, this was their wedding, and the night was coming. Had he messed this up?
Under the table, a gloved hand found his and squeezed, and then held on. There was a tension in Alice’s grip that belied her calm words. Osvald gripped her hand back.
“I don’t think I like cherries,” Alice announced, considering their plate.
He looked at her. “Now why would they have given us cherries at our wedding banquet if you didn’t like them?”
Alice gave him the biggest smile that he’d seen on her face yet. “A signal that what we want doesn’t matter.”
That was probably true, and he didn’t know what would come next. But at least he wasn’t doing it alone, he had her hand in his. “I am getting this impression, yes,” he said, and smiled back at his wife. Osvald turned his attention to the plate and scraped the cherry sauce to his side of the plate. He pushed the glazed carrots forward. “You can have these,” he said.