David had deduced one thing about the Chapalii. They loved grandeur. They loved huge, towering spaces and masses of intricate and floridly-overwhelming decoration. So Charles had built a new reception room, a small, intimate reception chamber set into one of the corner towers and furnished to his own taste.
It was David's favorite room in the entire palace.
Two walls were windows, opening out onto a balcony that looked out over the tule flats and the far green glint of the greenhouse wing. David sat on one of the two sofas while Charles went to the bureau and rummaged for drinks.
"Canadian or Martian?" Charles asked, setting out two bottles of whiskey.
"Three of those pieces are new," said David, nodding toward the white wall above the bureau, where Charles displayed his favorite art. He stood up and walked diagonally across the room, skirting the cartograph-lectern, to the opposite corner and stared at the full suit of lamellar armor that stood out on the balcony. The lacquered leather strips and polished iron segments gleamed in the long light of the setting sun. "This is new, too. That's jaran armor."
"Yes, it is." Charles handed him his whiskey.
Suzanne came in. "He's here."
Charles walked back to sit down on the other sofa, so that he could look both out the window and at the plain teak double doors that opened into the room. David remained where he was.
Suzanne opened both doors, and Tai-en Naroshi entered, followed by one of his ubiquitous stewards. The duke held a crystal wand in his right hand.
"Tai-en," said Charles.
"Tai-en," said Naroshi.
The room itself was pale, lit by the two walls of windows and by the two white walls and by the furniture, all of it a light teak. Even the accents, the throw rug and the linen cushions on the sofas, were white. Even so, Naroshi's skin was paler still.
He examined the room, and Charles allowed him silence in which to do so. He paced slowly along the wall against which the bureau stood, looking at each piece of art in turn: the tapestry of birds; the woven doormat of green and red stripes; a saber sheathed in a gold case studded with pearls and emeralds; a silk robe embroidered with the lion and the moon of the Habakar royal house; the embossed bronze teapot and the enameled vase set on the bureau; a painting of Jeds, seen from the harbor, which was in fact the only piece of art along the wall. The other things functioned, on Rhui, as utilitarian objects, however beautiful they might appear displayed here.
Naroshi circled back, paused beside the tilted podium which was Charles's cartographer's table, and crossed the room to sit on the other sofa. Suzanne and the steward stood silently on either side of the open doors.
"I received your summons," Naroshi said. He placed the wand carefully across both knees.
"I am distressed, Tai-en," said Charles, "by these charges which the Protocol Office has brought against members of my house,"
"It would sadden the emperor, indeed," replied Naroshi, "to have this matter brought to his attention. If only I could be assured that such a transgression had not occurred."
Which it had, of course. David glanced at Suzanne, but she was watching the two dukes.
Charles placed a hand on each knee, echoing the placement of Naroshi's hands. "My people would never have gone down to Rhui of their own volition because they know the strength of the interdiction, and, indeed, the only reason they would ever have been forced to go down there would be because another house, other Chapalii under another lord, had violated the interdiction and thus forced these, my own people, to investigate."
Naroshi's pallor did not alter. But David waited, breathless, to see how he would respond. It was a classic gambit, of course: I know you sent your people down; yes, but I know you sent your people down.
"I am certain," said Naroshi finally, "that it would take considerable provocation for any lord to break an interdiction approved by the emperor himself. I must be mistaken. I will inform the Protocol Office that they must erase all charges on their list."
"We are agreed, then," said Charles. Now they knew exactly where each of them stood-more or less. Did Naroshi know that Tess was still alive? Did he guess? Did he know that Tess had transferred to her brother the cylinder from the Mushai's banks? Did Naroshi have such a copy himself? David hid a cough behind his hand. He decided that less had the advantage over more.
"But that is not the only reason I requested your presence here, Tai-en," added Charles.
Naroshi lifted his chin, acknowledging the comment. "I am honored beyond measure that you would allow my sister to design the mausoleum for your departed heir. I have brought her design with me, for you to view."
"You are generous, Tai-en. May I hope that we can view it now?"
The two sofas sat perpendicular to each other, one with its back to a windowed wall, one with its back to the bookshelves that lined the rest of the wall out from the doors. Up from the rug that lay between them, an edifice rose.
David caught a gasp back in his throat. It was a clever insult. Or perhaps not an insult at all, but a tacit acknowledgment of their shared crime. It was the palace of Morava, clearly, in its essential design, but twisted and turned in on itself, crossed with the starker classical lines of the Parthenon and made feminine by a profusion of bright frescos of elegant ladies in belled skirts and fitted jackets surrounded by flowers, and by the tiers of columns surrounding the central dome. The design was a clear reminder of the rebel duke, the Tai-en Mushai, and yet it was also uniquely itself. It was stunning.
Charles rose and paced once around the edifice and sat back down again.
"What site have you procured?" he asked.
Naroshi inclined his head. "We have received a dispensation from the emperor's Chamberlain of the Avenue of the Red Blossom to build the mausoleum along the Field of Empty Hands."
David had not a clue what or where the Field of Empty Hands was, and he wondered if Charles did, either, but Charles certainly did not show any uncertainty in his reply.
"That would be well, Tai-en. I am honored by your interest, and by your sister's skill."
"We all mourn, when a member of one of the great families dies, whether by the cessation of breath or the act of extinction, of leaving, that forever separates them from their kin."
Charles bowed his head, perhaps the better to shadow his expression. It was true that, by Chapalii law, now that Charles had acknowledged Jess's marriage to Bakhtiian, Tess did indeed lose her position as Charles's heir. So ran the Chapalii inheritance laws, and laws of marriage: a female upon marriage takes her husband's status exclusively. Presumably Naroshi's own sister was unmarried, else she would not still remain in his house. Naroshi might believe Tess was dead-Bakhtiian had told his agent that. But Cara had also told David that Tess's original marriage had taken place at Morava; did Naroshi know about that? Or was his comment not about Tess at all but simply a reference to the emperor, who severed all ties of kinship, all ties with his past, on the day he stepped up to the imperial throne? There were a hundred other possibilities, all of them too damned convoluted for David's taste.
"Tai-en," said Charles into the silence. "I have a proposition for you."
Naroshi regarded him steadily.
"Just as you have brought this to me-" He gestured toward the edifice, now curling into mist at the edges as it faded away. "-I propose to bring a human art to you. We humans create an art form that is transitory, played out each night once in a way that can never be duplicated, and yet, played out the next night in the same way that is, still, different from what it was before. It is called theater. I would bring this theater into Imperial space, if you would be willing to sponsor its travel."
"Theater," said Naroshi. The human word sounded strange and ominous on his lips. "I know what this art is." He inclined his head. "I would be pleased to sponsor a-ah, I know the word. The tour."