Chapter 89:

Daylight – sunstir’s daylight – streaming through the broad tall windows of the broad tall auditorium-turned-courtroom. “Today is the 25th diurnal of the 870th Rainsoon Season. Let us begin.” Vek, sitting in one of a thousand red cane-backed chairs, watching the judge at her podium. The judge at her podium, watching the struggling regent forced to stand, bound, before her. “You are accused of theft, you are accused of destroying a magistrate’s printing press.”

The struggling regent, bound, crying out. “You can’t do this! I’m in Lady Nari’s patronage, only she can do this, you can’t, who are you, a ragtag bunch of servies and soldiers, you can’t bring me up on trial, you can’t, you can’t, you’re not allowed to!”

Vek, eyes wide, thinking. Servies and soldiers, she means a Servies and Soldiers Syndicate, she has to, she has to, oh rock-god, Barhon was right about the serfs joining them, he has to be right, if there are enough serfs in the Syndicates to do this, to take someone who was only doing what her patron told her to do and then punish her for it, oh rock-god, how can this be happening, how can Lady Nari let this happen, how can it happen that you can be punished by someone else for doing what you were told to do –

***

I need to talk to Lady Nari.

Why?

I just need to talk to her.

Lady Nari is busy. If she wanted to run the interrogation corps personally, she would do so.

It’s not about that.

If it’s not about interrogations, I don’t care. Who do you think I am, your telegraph handler?

***

Vek stood in front of Lady Nari’s chamber door, his chest heaving. He didn’t know what to say. Lady Nari’s attendant was standing there on the landing with him, looking at him, but she wasn’t saying a word, not even to ask him to leave. Should Vek ask her to let him pass? Would she listen? No, no, of course she wouldn’t, how could Vek even think that he had any right to come unsummoned to Lady Nari’s chamber!

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. The attendant still didn’t say anything. But Vek couldn’t take it anymore; he started to cry. He didn’t know why, exactly. All he knew was that he felt terrible, absolutely terrible.

Suddenly Vek felt the back of the attendant’s hand against his cheek. She was brushing away Vek’s tears. There was a strange look on her face, strange, but strangely familiar too. Who had last looked at Vek like that? Sukren, maybe, Sukren, it had to be. That half-frightened half-kind glance, yes, that was Sukren, just like the look Sukren always gave him whenever he took care of Vek, oh, Vek hadn’t thought about Sukren all season, he hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t wanted to think about losing him too, especially not now, not when Vek desperately wished he had someone to go to, someone, anyone, he could trust to look out for him!

Vek blinked as the attendant pulled away her hand. He watched as she made a gesture, as if she were patting the air in front of Vek. Then Vek got it. She’s telling me to wait here, she’s going into Lady Nari’s chamber, she’s going to ask Lady Nari for me if I can come in, oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!

When the attendant returned, and gestured Vek forward, he followed her gratefully. Inside Lady Nari’s chamber, it was the same as before. Her desk, outlined in sunlight, was on the other end of the long room. Lady Nari wasn’t sitting in it, though. This time she was seated in an upholstered double chair, a courting chair that faced a rich, heavy tapestry hanging over the wall to Vek’s right.

She glanced over her shoulder at Vek. “Come in. Sit down.”

Sit on the courting chair? With Lady Nari?

Gingerly Vek lowered himself into the sofa. He felt very uncomfortable.

“Ajay tells me you’re upset.”

At that, all his emotion came flooding back. Vek had to blink rapidly to keep his tears at bay. Rock-god, he cried so easily! He was seventeen, now, not a child anymore, why couldn’t he have better control?

“What’s wrong?”

Vek closed his eyes. He shook his head and tried to laugh, but it came out breathy and weak. “I… I…”

He couldn’t say it. But why not? Hadn’t he come here to tell Lady Nari how sick he felt, sick to his heart, sick to his bones? Here she was, listening, asking him what was wrong. So why couldn’t he speak?

I’ve seen her do terrible things to those she’s closest to, I’ve seen her destroy those who love her, all, all, to feed her need for control. She is sick, I tell you, she is sick –

No, no, Vek couldn’t believe that. He couldn’t! Lady Nari was good and right, and she loved him, she loved the serfs, she was looking at him right now with a tenderness that was real. Vek would believe it – he had to believe it – who else did he have – he had no choice – oh Anzana –

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Vek took a shuddering breath. Slowly, haltingly, he told Lady Nari everything. How he’d interrogated Anzana. How he’d failed to update her Free Serf file. How he’d gone looking for Barhon on his own, and how Barhon had recruited him into a Servies and Soldiers Syndicate. How he’d failed to tell Op about it. How he’d gone to Woodheart Castle to find the pamphlet-writer so as to avoid updating either Anzana’s or Barhon’s files. How he’d seen the regent who’d organized the confiscation of the publisher’s printing press get tried by a Servies and Soldiers Syndicate.

“I didn’t understand,” he whispered. “I don’t understand. Why is this happening? I thought… I thought when the Uprising happened… that everything would be…”

“Perfect.”

“Yes,” he whispered.

He couldn’t bring himself to look at Lady Nari. He kept himself facing forward, kept his eyes on the tapestry before him. A planet, brown and blue and white, filled its bottom half. Above the globe the tapestry was dark and dotted with stars. In its very center was a silver tower, no, a starship, the kind their ancestors had come in, like a metal arrow, shooting out into the night sky…

Vek felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and was stunned. Lady Nari had placed her hand on his arm. She’d never done that before. Not once in all the years he’d known her.

“It’s not perfect yet because it isn’t finished yet,” she said quietly. “Not in the way the pamphlet-writer thinks, but in the way of the prophecy. The Free Serfs are to rally together and build a starship. After that, the Promised Daughter must go to the Lake Tower to unlock the secret to space travel so we can return to Earth. Only then will it be perfect.”

So we can return to Earth…

All at once, Vek could see it. All at once, Lady Nari’s words made sense. He’d heard them before, but not really, not in a way that mattered. But now, with Lady Nari’s hand on his shoulder, with her attention concentrated on him, they struck Vek. So that was where happiness was. On Earth.

A burst of relief washed through him. Of course! Of course Earth was the answer! Earth had always been the answer! Vek had forgotten. He’d lost sight. But now, he was being corrected, and how sweet the rebuke was. Now he could keep on hoping in the Uprising. Now he could keep on pressing forward. What a gift Lady Nari was giving him!

And to think that Vek – that Vek had dared to doubt her –

Tears once more sprang into Vek’s eyes. This time, he didn’t try to stop them. “Tell me what to do,” he whispered. “Tell me how I can help.”

A smile crossed Lady Nari’s face. Vek ached with joy at the sight of it. He had been right to come here. He had been right to seek out Lady Nari. Anzana was wrong, she was wrong, and it was good that Op had had her arrested, it was good to remove problematic serfs from the Uprising. Only the best ought to enjoy the Uprising! Only the perfect ought to enjoy perfection!

It was good that Vek had interrogated her…

Vek forcibly turned away from himself. He faced Lady Nari. “Please,” he begged. “Tell me what to do. I’ll do anything, I’ll go and do it right now, anything.”

She patted his shoulder then removed her hand. “Meet with that Servies and Soldiers Syndicate again, the one that recruited you. Pretend to them that you are giving me bad intelligence. Find out what you can.”

Vek nodded. That, he could do. It would be almost like a mission, like the ones he’d done all the time before the Uprising. Rock-god, Vek had loved doing missions. The thrill of it, the anticipation, the near catch, the triumph! Was there anything better? Was there anything more perfect?

“I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll find out everything. They won’t stop us.”

The smile was still on Lady Nari’s lips. “Soon, it’ll all be perfect.”

***

The trials, though. They didn’t end.

“One of those Syndicates dragged someone into the auditorium, the one the Rajas used to use for queen day ceremonies,” Zedid told him late at night the very next diurnal. “I went to it. It was pretty awful. They screamed at him for hours and called him terrible, a disgrace, and a casteist too. They also accused him of attacking one of them.”

Vek went rigid. “What do you mean, attacking?”

They were sitting together on her bed, huddled up beneath the underside of the top bunk, the way they’d used to sit back when they were in the barracks. “The judge said the man tried to lead one of them away, but when she wouldn’t come, he attacked her and tried to drag her somewhere else. He was stopped though by the rest of the Syndicate.”

Tried to lead one of them away… tried to drag her somewhere else… Vek swallowed.

Zedid lowered her voice. “I don’t understand why Lady Nari isn’t stopping this. Doesn’t she have the power to do so?”

Vek rubbed the back of his head with the knuckles on his four-fingered hand. He would need another haircut soon. He tried to remember what Lady Nari had told him, but the news that the trials were continuing – and worse, that they were starting to happen in Lost Technology Castle too – was melting everything out of his mind.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!”

***

One diurnal later, Vek found himself face down in his bunk, the covers over his head. Earlier that day, during sunwake, he had decided to follow some rumors into the auditorium Zedid had mentioned to him. There the Syndicates were again, having another trial. This time it was to punish someone for speaking out against them.

Op had given Vek another mark to follow up on. Vek had figured out exactly when and where to approach her: Zone 6, Level 1, 1st nightsleep of the 28th diurnal; in other words, right now. But Vek couldn’t do it. He knew he had to. Barhon had told him to keep up the pretense that he was acting under Lady Nari’s orders, and Lady Nari had told him to keep up the pretense that there was a pretense. Both of them would have wanted him to follow through as if everything were normal.

But Vek couldn’t do it. The trial, that trial, he’d watched it his heart burning with fear, he’d watched it with his hands trembling. He just couldn’t do it. Not tonight. No, all he could do tonight was hide.

It’ll be perfect when we’re on Earth, he told himself desperately. On Earth, it’ll be perfect, it’ll be perfect on Earth, it’ll be perfect…

***

“Vek, Vek, wake up!”

He groaned. “What?”

It was Zedid, sounding excited, or maybe panicked. “Guess what happened last night.”

Vek almost didn’t want to know. It had been a diurnal since the last trial; had they done another one already? He blinked his eyes open slowly. It was darkwake which meant it was both harder and easier to wake up. No sunlight in his eyes, but also no sunlight at all. Nothing but Zedid’s definitely panicked face in front of him in the gloom.

“What?” he managed.

“Lord Tyr is dead. He was assassinated. Lord Dasgu’s taken over both the Eenta quinters, and he’s declaring himself queen of the Eenta.”