A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (64 page)

She sighed. Why had Ormuz insist she meet him here? She would have been happy to pick him up from the pub where he lived. But, of course, he was a prole now and being taken away in an OPI staff car would only cause trouble. The last time they’d spoken he had mentioned he was having difficulty being accepted by those who frequented the pub. He might not even be safe there. Muggings and street violence were common in the prole districts of Toshi. Ormuz could defend himself… with a sword. But he was no longer permitted to carry one.

The sooner he was out of Chikogu, the better. Finesz wanted to offer him one of the OPI’s safe apartments, but Norioko might learn of it. Ormuz would certainly not be safe if the Involutes knew his location.

A figure moving down the staircase caught her attention. It was Ormuz. He descended quickly, keeping his gaze down, and only looked up when he reached the street. He hurried across the road to the staff car. Finesz slid back in her seat as Ormuz pulled open the door. He scrambled in and settled next to her.

He wore a plain jacket and trousers which had clearly not been tailored to fit him, and Finesz opened her mouth to ask why he was dressed so poorly. She shut her mouth without speaking and coloured as the reason occurred to her.

“How have you been?” she asked, hoping he had not spotted her embarrassment.

Ormuz nodded and scratched at his neck as though irritated by his shirt’s material. “Fine,” he replied.

And in that one word, Finesz knew Ormuz had returned to his roots. She could no longer see the young prince he’d been when he arrived on Shuto, and marvelled that his return to his proletarian beginnings had been so quick. She’d seen him transform from prole to lordling on the journey to Linna, and witnessed further changes during their stay with the Duke of Kunta. How much, she wondered, of that metamorphosis had been the clothes he wore? Now he looked like a young and somewhat effete prole.

She remembered the assembly on Linna and Ormuz the newly-minted peer trying to drum up support for his crusade to save the Imperial Throne from the Serpent. Things had not quite turned out as planned. And all this because she had followed a regimental-lieutenant out to Makarta Province and witnessed his attempt to kill a young man who served aboard a data-freighter.

Finez knew her history—some parts admittedly better than others. In her youth, she had been quite fond of melodramas set during the Intolerance. They had not been especially accurate—history rarely had so coherent a narrative—but she had read up on the subject to improve her knowledge. Now… Now, she was writing the future. Perhaps, thousands of years hence, visitors to the Imperial Household District would see the ruin of Mount Yama and wonder what had happened. Much like the District’s mysterious Ruins. She smiled. She quite liked the idea of being part of a historical mystery.

“Why must I go and see him?” Ormuz asked.

“No one said you ‘must’,” replied Finesz, “but I thought you might like to meet him.”

“I’ve already met him.”

“In battle. That hardly counts. Besides, I thought you might want to get away from your pub for a while. How are things with your little barmaid?”

“She’s not a barmaid,” he replied mulishly. “She works for a company writing protocols for data-pools. And things are good with Inni. Last night we went to a dance club.”

“It’s serious?” Finesz was surprised—from Ormuz’s tone of voice, it was clear he was sleeping with her. Had he forgotten the Admiral already?

“She’d be a good match for me.”

So that was it. He was determined to fit in as a proletarian. He had either given up on his dreams of betterment, or turned his back on them after the Admiral’s rejection.

“Well, perhaps,” Finesz said. “She seems very nice. What about your wound? How is that?”

Ormuz put a hand to his side. “Healing,” he said. “It barely hurts now.”

“The duke is… an interesting man,” Finesz said, returning to the original subject of their conversation. “You have much in common.” As soon as she had said it, she felt foolish. Ormuz was a clone of Ahasz, so of course they had a great deal in common. Although they were very different people.

“Indeed,” Ormuz said, a brief flash of the young lordling Finesz had known on Linna. “How is it you know him so well?”

“When I was a prisoner, just before you arrived and lifted the siege. We spoke every day for about a week.” She smiled at the memory. “He’d been there for half a year; I think he was lonely.”

“I can’t believe you consorted with the enemy! Sliva, he tried to take the Throne.”

Ormuz scowled and Finesz guessed he had reminded himself of how the Admiral had become empress. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said to him.

“She promised me!”

“I don’t think she ever intended to take the Throne. It was only at the last she changed her mind.”

“Or had it changed for her,” Ormuz said bitterly. “It was that Involute.”

“Yes, Gyome…” She glanced at Ormuz and saw he was staring at her. “Ah,” she said. “Gyome… Baron Kanban… my boss… It seems he’s an Involute. Has been all along. I’m almost certain that was him at the end there.”

“In the Emperor’s study?”

Finesz nodded, remembering the Admiral being taken to one side by the Involute. The pair of them had stood beside a smashed bookcase, its contents scattered across the floor, white beneath a layer of dust, many trampled into the carpet. They had discussed something quietly and Finesz had thought then that there was more than one conspiracy at work in this rebellion.

“I can’t work for him anymore,” she told Ormuz. “Not for an Involute.”

“You’re going to resign from the Oppies?”

“I haven’t decided. I’m not sure I want to stay—in the OPI, or on Shuto. But I can’t go back to my old profession.” She gave a wry grin. “And I’ve spent pretty much my entire life in Toshi.”

“Have you ever been to a prison?” Finesz asked as the staff car left Toshi behind. They were in the foothills of the Kami range now, where lush verdant meadows spread to either side of the road in undulating folds. Far ahead, the ground rose more abruptly, the green left behind as the rock raced towards the heights of the mountain peaks. There, the sun shone brightly, as if in another country on another clock. Mount Takama dominated the horizon, grey and black and indigo and white, the cloudless blue sky a mirror and the mountain a vast triangular section of it which had cracked and shattered to reveal the wall beneath.

Ormuz turned from the window. “No, I haven’t,” he said.

“Well, the House of Rectitude isn’t exactly a prison. I mean, people are incarcerated there, but…”

“It’s for high nobles.”

Finesz nodded. “Yes,” she admitted.

“So I should expect some sort of luxury hotel. Every convenience, every whim catered to… except they can never leave.”

The inspector laughed. She grinned at Ormuz. “Yes, something like that. The House is as richly appointed as any duke’s palace. I don’t doubt that some of the inmates live better there than they do in their fiefs.”

“That’s insane. People would commit crimes just so they can be sent there.”

“I’m not saying it doesn’t happen,” Finesz replied. “But you should know by now what you can, or can’t, get away with as a high noble. You were a prince for half a year.”

“Some people can get away with anything,” Ormuz said bitterly.

Finesz opened her mouth to contradict this, but closed it as she recalled a previous visit to the House of Rectitude in search of Norioko.

She turned back to gaze out of the window beside her. The staff car had entered a dark and shadowed forest. Needle-leafed evergreens leaned inwards and over the road to form an organic vaulting, filtering the sun as though under a green sea. An irregular and wide-spaced stockade of black trunks lined the route, and in the gaps between the trees, Finesz saw yet more ebon pillars forming labyrinthine ways through the gloom.

Her mood began to echo that of the view from the limousine, and she wondered what this trip to visit the captive duke would bring. Ariman umar Vonshuan, Duke of Ahasz. Ormuz was Ahasz, and yet he was not.

“What’s he like?”

“The duke? You’ll find out soon enough—No, it’s not that.” She leaned forward and peered at Ormuz, and she knew that he would understand exactly what she meant.

“I liked him, Casimir. He’s charming.” She grinned abruptly, breaking the sombre mood. “He certainly has more polish than you.”

As she spoke, the limousine left the forest and bright sunlight shone into the vehicle. The sudden brightness briefly blinded Finesz and she put a hand to her eyes. Ormuz was reduced to a black silhouette.

“I think you’ll like him,” she said, “although you might not believe you should.” She dropped her hand but her sight had yet to fully return.

“He tried to take the Imperial Throne, Sliva.”

“Ah yes.” Finesz sat back and folded her arms across her bosom. “I was there, you know.” She shook her head. “Oh, Casimir,” she said sadly, “what have we got ourselves into?”

“You say that every time you see me,” he accused.

“Because each time I find it hard to believe what you’ve managed to drag me into.”

“Me?” he scoffed. “You were involved long before you met me. Remember? You followed a Housecarl to Darrus.”

She sighed. “Don’t remind me. When I think back now how close I came to walking away…”

“Norioko told you back off, didn’t he?”

“He did. But like a fool, I disobeyed him. Not that I knew he was an Involute at the time.”

The House of Rectitude was visible now as the road swung in a wide arc to the left. The limousine descended the slope to the House’s entrance. As it approached the bailey, a pair of Bailiffs stepped out of a guard-room. One held up a hand. The staff car drew smoothly to a stop.

Troop-Sergeant Assaun handed across identification to one guard, while the other peered into the passenger compartment. He frowned at Ormuz, who pointedly took his collar and thrust forward the escutcheon pinned there. The guard scowled but moved away. Soon after, the car floated into the House of Rectitude’s manicured grounds.

“What will they do to him?” Ormuz asked.

“Ahasz?” Finesz gestured vaguely with one hand. “I’ve no idea. The sentence for open rebellion is execution and corruption of blood. But the Vonshuans are powerful, so I suspect the duchy won’t be touched.”

Corruption of blood: revoking the patent of nobility. If Ahasz had possessed any heirs or immediate family, they would become proletarians and all their holdings would revert to the Imperial Throne.

“The Admiral needs money to rebuild,” Ormuz pointed out. “Corruption of blood would give her Ahasz’s fortune.”

“He has enough allies in the Electorate to keep his fief safe. It’ll all be aboveboard and scrupulously fair. The Empress can do nothing else—the Vonshuans have a
lot
of clout.”

The staff car had reached the House’s front door and came to a halt. Troop-Sergeant Assaun jumped out of the front of the vehicle and pulled open the door beside Ormuz.

Finesz was the first to clamber out. She stepped to one side, fiddled with her sword, tugged at the hem of her black OPI jacket, and then pulled her cap onto her head.

Ormuz climbed out to stand beside her and together they marched up the steps to the open doors of the building. Thick caramel light sat gelid in the foyer within. Walls, floor and ceiling of polished wood gleamed with a confectionary shine and everything seemed frozen in time, a snapshot of ages past.

The illusion was broken, first by footsteps, then by the appearance of a tall lugubrious man in pale grey. He marched into the foyer, turned smartly towards Finesz and Ormusz and approached them.

“Inspector Finesz?” His voice, airy and musical, did not fit his appearance.

“Yes.”

“To see the duke, yes?”

Finesz doffed her cap, scowled momentarily at it, and then nodded.

“The appropriate permissions have been sought and gained. The duke is in his apartment. I shall escort you there.”

The Duke of Ahasz’s “apartment” proved to be in a distant wing of the House, with excellent views over the park-like grounds. The warden led them along a corridor with enormous windows, which laid great rectangles of golden light across the wooden floor. Between the windows were portraits of dour-looking men and women, and Finesz wondered if they were distinguished prisoners. Yeoman wardens were unlikely to be so honoured.

At a door at the end of the corridor, the warden knocked politely, and then pushed open the door.

“It’s not locked?” Ormuz asked, surprised.

The warden looked at him. “Of course not. We have the duke’s word.”

Ahasz was seated on a sofa before the fireplace, and casually attired in a plain white shirt, tight black trousers and knee-high boots. He had one leg crossed over the other and an open book in his hands. He looked up as the trio entered, put his book to one side and smiled warmly.

“Your visitors, your grace,” the warden said.

The duke rose smoothly to his feet and approached, hands held forward to greet Ormuz and Finesz. “Inspector Finesz. Sliva. It’s good of you to visit me in my cell.” He smiled to indicate he was joking. Turning to Ormuz, he continued, “Casimir Ormuz. I hope your wound is not troubling you.” He sketched a brief bow, equal to equal.

“But, please.” He turned and indicated the sofa opposite the one on which he had been seated.

He waited until both Finesz and Ormuz were settled before reseating himself.

Finesz glanced from Ahasz to Ormuz and back again. It was as if the gap between the two sofas were a gap in time. Beside her sat the young duke. Across from her sat the middle-aged duke. The carpet between the two, however, was more than just a chasm of years. Ahasz had been a high noble from birth.

“Before we begin,” the duke said, “would you care for a drink? Some wine, perhaps?”

Not waiting for an answer, he lifted his gaze and spoke into the air. “A bottle of the Piyani ‘47, if you please. And three glasses.” To Finesz and Ormuz, he added, “They listen constantly, eager for a hint of conspiracy.” He clearly found the situation amusing, although Finesz thought it disturbingly intrusive.