Rock of Ages (7 page)

Relieved to be left alone, Roman went straight to the service plate and called for a robot to come to the room and scratch the fiery itch in the center of his back.

Dinner featured pleasant conversation and no card tricks—Maijstral understood that to be consistently amazing is, in the long run, to risk becoming consistently predictable, if not consistently dull. Besides, Maijstral was very pleased with the one trick he’d performed that day, and had no desire to perform other tricks that weren’t as spectacular.

After dinner, Joseph Bob, the Bubber, and Arlette played a three-sided game of puff-sticks in the drawing room, while Maijstral browsed along the bookshelves. There were a lot of histories and biographies, many of which concerned members of the Prince’s family. Maijstral browsed the pages of one of these—it concerned the great Flax-Seed Scandal that rocked, the Empire in the decade before the Rebellion and the then-Bubber’s ambiguous role therein—and discovered that the margins had been annotated in pencil. Most of the annotations were in the human alphabet, and consisted of the letter “L” or the letters “DL,” sometimes followed by an exclamation mark.

Maijstral waited for an auspicious moment to interrupt the puff-sticks game, then asked Joseph Bob what the letters meant. The Prince gave the book a glance.

“Oh, that’s my grandfather’s notes,” he said. “He annotated all the histories that way. L stands for ‘lie,’ and DL for 'damned lie.’”

Maijstral smiled. “I am enlightened,” he said. “Thank you.” As he returned to the bookshelf the Duchess of Benn approached, rustling in a silk gown of imperial purple that admirably echoed her violet eyes.

“Maijstral,” Roberta said, “I was wondering if you might join Kuusinen and me for a moment. There is something upstairs that might interest you.”

“Of course, your grace.” Maijstral closed the book and returned it to the shelves.

Feeling the sort of languid curiosity that is the best one can hope for after a large, well-prepared meal, Maijstral followed after Roberta. Little warning spikes of pain jumped along his thighs as he climbed up the stairs—the morning’s riding, he thought. Roberta’s gown plunged behind, and he found himself enjoying, once more, the supple play of muscle and shadow on the Duchess’s back.

Roberta led Maijstral past her own suite, then opened a door into another room and stepped inside. Maijstral followed, saw what waited therein, and stopped dead. Kuusinen almost ran into him from behind.

Maijstral’s first thought was that Conchita Sparrow had really outdone herself this time—not only stealing a huge cryocoffin from somewhere, but sneaking it past Joseph Bob’s security and hiding it in the room—but then he began to recognize the coffin’s sweeping bronze lines, turned into little classical scrolls on either end, and he frowned and stepped into the room, a song of warning keening in the back of his head.

Aunt Batty, he observed, had been keeping the coffin company: she was well established in a rocking chair in one corner, surrounded by a little thicket of manuscript on which she’d been working. Evidently the coffin’s appearance was not a surprise to her, or to anyone in the Duchess’s party.

Maijstral looked at the Imperial Arms and Lineage etched into the coffin lid, and it only confirmed his worst suspicions. His heart sank.

“Hello, Dad,” he said. “How did you get here?”

A plaintive voice came from the coffin.

“Is it time for my cocoa yet?” it asked.

CHAPTER FIVE

Maijstral had believed that he had kept his late father without enough funds to travel, and as his father’s legal guardian he’d forbade his father to borrow. Well, he thought, his dad had got the funds from
somewhere
, probably a little account he’d been hiding all these years, or maybe an old friend who’d been persuaded to make a loan; and Maijstral would have to get the lawyers to start searching for the source . . .
after
, Maijstral considered, the late Gustav Maijstral was shipped home to his tomb and safely reinstalled in the home of his ancestors.

“Drake?” the corpse inquired. “Is that you, Drake?”

“Yes, Dad,” Maijstral sighed. “It’s me.”

“I came here for a very good reason,” Gustav Maijstral said firmly. “I want my cocoa!” And then, added, “. . . I
think
. I
think
that’s why I’m here.”

“Dad,” Maijstral said patiently, “you can’t have cocoa. You’re dead.”

Maijstral gave an apologetic look to the others while his father mulled this over.

“Oh yes,” the corpse remarked. “You’re right. I’m dead. I forgot.”

It is impossible not to observe that the former Duke of Dornier, ex-Viscount Sing, onetime Prince-Bishop of Nana, and late Hereditary Captain-General of the Green Legion had not been a particularly astute man while alive, and that death had not improved him.

Kuusinen cleared his throat tactfully. Roberta took the hint and turned to Maijstral.

“Actually,” she said, “it’s my fault he’s here.”

“Oh yes!” the corpse added. “That’s right!” He sighed, which came out of the coffin’s speakers as a faint electronic sizzle. “I keep forgetting these things. . . .”

Maijstral turned, his bewildered attention to Roberta. “He came to see
you?
” he asked.

“Not exactly,” she said. “I arranged for him to be brought here to see you, but . . .”

“I remember! I remember!” the corpse cried triumphantly. “I remember why I’m here!” And then the voice trailed away. “I
thought
I remembered . . . just a moment . . . maybe it’ll come back.”

Roberta passed a hand over her brow. “This isn’t working out the way I’d hoped,” she said. “Kuusinen, can you help me?”

Kuusinen nodded and turned to Maijstral. “As you know, I am her grace’s solicitor. Two years ago, her grace instructed me to undertake certain researches having to do with a Special Project she was undertaking in regard to her future. You and your family were among those to whom I devoted my efforts.”

Maijstral’s head was whirling, but he managed to put his finger on at least one important point. “That’s why I keep running into you,” he said. “On Peleng, and Silverside Station, and...”

“Just so,” Kuusinen nodded.

“And what was the tenor of these researches?”

Kuusinen looked appropriately grave. “The contract of a matrimonial alliance,” he said, “between Her Grace the Duchess of Benn and…”

Maijstral jumped as if stung. “
No!
” he said.

The others stared at him.

“Absolutely not,” Maijstral said.

Roberta’s eyes were wide. Her lower lip trembled. “But . . . why not?” she asked.

Maijstral folded his arms and looked stern. “I absolutely forbid you to marry my father. He’s married already, for one thing, and for another he’s dead, and I don’t care what your demented relations told you would make a good dynastic alliance, you’d just be throwing your life away…”

His words trickled away as Roberta’s real intent slowly filtered its way into his mind.

“Oh,” he said.

In Maijstral’s defense it must be said that this really
was
a surprise. He’d been thrown off-balance by his father’s arrival, and made slow by a good dinner, and he wasn’t operating at full speed.

All that said, he certainly proved a bit dense on this occasion. However, one should remember that this sort of thing happens to the best of us, and usually, alas, where personal matters are concerned.

“Well, yes,” Roberta admitted. “It was you I was planning to marry, Drake.”

Maijstral’s head whirled, but even through all his inner confusion he couldn’t help but admire Roberta’s style . . . to have Kuusinen quietly case him for a year, to carry her valuable jewels to Silverside Station as a way of bringing herself together with Maijstral, and then to arrange for all the necessities of the formal betrothal as dictated by Khosali High Custom: a representative from each of the families (his father for the Maijstrals and, he presumed, Aunt Batty on the Duchess’s side), a meeting on neutral ground (the estate of the Prince of Tejas), a neutral who had doubtless conspired with her to sneak Maijstral’s father onto the premises while Maijstral was at the Grand Canyon or on his morning ride. He wouldn’t be surprised if there was an Imperial Recorder stowed away in the next room, ready to transcribe all the niggling little details of noble lineage and so forth on a formal betrothal written with a jade pen on the tanned hide of a grookh, proper for transmission to the City of Seven Bright Rings, where the Khosali Emperor himself, Nnis CVI, would give his formal permission for the wedding.

Permission in these cases was never denied, of course. Nnis CVI had retired to his cryocoffin long ago, and was probably in worse shape than Maijstral’s father.

Roberta had acted brilliantly, and in so doing had displayed a surprising amount of subtlety for one so young. Maijstral was struck with awe.

He was also struck by the realization that he didn’t know whether he wanted to marry Roberta or not, She was young, she was attractive, she was intelligent and interesting, she was staggeringly rich, and she was thoroughly worthy of admiration… but yet.

But yet. She was not, in his brief experience, an
easy
person. She was high-strung, she was quick-tempered, she was a fierce competitor who raced in the highest amateur league. Her force of will was prodigious. Maijstral admired her, but thus far he’d succeeded in admiring her only at a distance. Who knew what emotion might result from closer proximity?

Maijstral became aware that the others were watching him with their ears cocked forward in expectation. Clearly some manner of reply was required. He bowed toward the Duchess and placed a hand over his heart without quite knowing what he was going to say. Fortunately, his training came to the fore.

The Nnoivarl Academy, ridiculous though its curriculum might be in any practical respect, is at least good for seeing its graduates through a crisis of style.

“I am astounded by your consideration,” Maijstral said. “I had never thought to look so high.” As he rose from his bow, he regarded Roberta carefully through half-closed lazy-lidded eyes—was that a trace of disappointment he saw mirrored in her face? Had she expected, he wondered, for him to throw himself into her arms?

If so, he considered, she shouldn’t have surrounded herself with all these intermediaries.

Delay, he thought. He still had no idea what his response would be—or, for that matter,
could
be.

“I should consult with my father to determine his wishes,” Maijstral said, then gave the coffin a dubious glance. “Insofar as they can be determined,” he added.

“Drake’s going to marry the Duchess!” sang the corpse. “
That’s
why I’m here! Wonderful girl! Imperial family! Good match! When the Emperor comes back, we’ll all live like kings!”

Well, Maijstral thought,
that
sounded like consent.

The impulse to delay was still uppermost in his thoughts. He turned to Roberta, his ears flicking forward. “Your grace,” he said, “may we speak to each other alone? Perhaps in the next room?”

Roberta bit her lip. “There’s an Imperial Recorder in the next room,” she said.

Knew it
, Maijstral thought.

“But we can use my parlor,” Roberta added. “It’s only a few doors away.”

“The parlor will suit perfectly well.” Maijstral turned to Aunt Batty and bowed. “If you will excuse us.”

He offered Roberta his arm and she took it As he closed the door behind them, she looked at him and bit her lip.

“You’re not angry, are you?”

“Of course not. I’m . . . stunned.”

“You didn’t have any idea? Really?”

“I thought Kuusinen had been scouting me out on account of your jewels. I’d no idea you had any… other interest.”

She opened the door to her parlor and passed inside. Maijstral sat down on a small settee, and Roberta sat next to him. His big diamond flashed as he reached to take her hand.

“How exactly… did this come about?” he asked.

Roberta looked at him with her violet eyes. “Well, the family were pressuring me to marry. And you can’t imagine the sort of candidates they came up with.”

“Indeed I can,” Maijstral said. “Elderly-bishops, gawky schoolboys who. can barely walk without falling down, middle-aged sportsmen gone to seed, a widowed duke looking for his fourth wife, lots of hopeful cousins who want your money, and an adopted human son of a Fifth-Degree Imperial Khosali Prince who is very fat and at least a hundred.”

Roberta smiled. “I can see you’ve met them.”

“On the contrary. I’ve met their sisters.”

Roberta gave him a knowing look. “I see. Well, you know the situation, then. All the candidates were so
hopeless
… and, of course,
safe
, in the purely dynastic sense, of course. So I decided that, if I had to marry, I would at least find a candidate who suited me better.”

“And I was chosen? Out of all our busy galaxy?”

Her ears reddened a bit. “I had a short list of about a dozen,” she confessed. “Paavo Kuusinen met all of them, over the course of a few years, and sent in his reports, and I arranged to meet some of the more promising candidates myself, and… well, I made my choice on Silverside Station, when I met you. Since then I had to travel back to the Empire to inform my family, and, well, to inform yours. Such as he is.”

“You could have done far worse,” Maijstral said. “You could have contacted my mother.”

Roberta bit her lip. “We don’t have to invite her to the wedding, do we?”

“Don’t ask her for my sake. But if we don’t invite her, she’ll probably crash the reception anyway, with an escort of His Majesty’s Secret Dragoons.”

“We’ll try to contain her somehow.”

They looked at each other for a moment, then self-consciously looked away. “I still don’t know how you fastened upon
me
,” Maijstral said. “You made your decision years ago, apparently, before I was very well-known to the public.”

“I knew a few things about you,” Roberta said. “I knew you would inherit an old title, which removed any objection on account of birth. I knew your parents were dedicated Imperialists, and your grandfather old Dornier was the most famous human Imperialist of all, so that removed any objections on account of politics and your citizenship in the Constellation. You were poor, of course, but I’ve got so much money that I certainly don’t need to marry it, and anyway you’ve eliminated that objection yourself by earning a fortune in the last year…”