The two armed watchmen, seeing all this, jumped forward roughly to grab the wild valet. One of them ordered the peace wand to leave his hand. The wand emitted a mudra that twisted the man’s arm so that his hissed with pain, forcing the hand open, and so the wand sprang away and stood upright on the floor a yard away.
But the ex–Watch Officer, now the bailiff, spoke in a low, dangerous monotone to the two watchmen holding him. “Let the hell go of me. Take his keys and his gloves as evidence to be held against the further investigations of the crime here, and hand them to me. I am the bailiff. Obey your lawful orders, jerks, or the Lord Hermeticist will call down his vengeance.”
The two watchmen looked at each other and looked toward the third man, who had been their commanding officer a moment ago. He was unarmed and yet was strangely unwilling to pick up the wand that stood next to him. He stood with his helmet open, and they both saw the uncertainty in his eyes, and they saw the red lights of recording lamps twinkling in the doorframe.
Coming to a decision, the two released the tall man who was now bailiff and seized the short man who was no longer seneschal.
The two turned the ex-seneschal’s keys, which were stored in the stone of a finger ring, and his gloves which contained his biometric information, over to the new bailiff.
The bailiff drew on one glove, put on the ring, and made the correct hand gesture toward the door to indicate that it must open.
The doors hesitated, puzzled.
The seneschal said, “Your scheming is vain! Only I can open the valves of that door once the Table is in session! You are too late! The Lord Hermeticist is barred from the Chamber, barred for being tardy! The regulations you are trying to dance around have snared you and tripped you into a pit!”
The bailiff said, “Your mouth is a pit. Shut it. When you are not in the antechamber, any law officer, including a bailiff, can perform needed functions in an emergency.”
“But I am in the antechamber!”
The bailiff must have been smiling under his mask, because there was a snide note in his voice. “I know that, and you know that, but in the eyes of the law, you left the antechamber the moment you were confined to quarters, because that is where you legally are supposed to be. Unless you want to be absent without leave during general quarters? The penalty for that is death, followed by resurrection and more death. What do you say?”
And he drew the sword, and put the point at the man’s throat, and the blade issued a mudra which prevented anyone from interfering or preventing whatever might happen next.
Apparently bailiffs during general quarters had more extensive authority than Vigil would have supposed, because the mudra forced Vigil back one step and two, and the two armed watchmen likewise.
Vigil was not sure if the faction opposing him was embarked on a quest for some cause they thought worthy of any sacrifice, or just attempting a political fraud to maintain their own seats of power and situation. This was the test. Because some men are born willing to die for their causes or their comrades, but no one is willing to die for a fraud.
“I am in my quarters and not in this room,” the chubby little seneschal said sadly.
So, either the seneschal was not such a man, or the attempt was a fraud rather than a sincere crusade. Vigil wished he knew more and hoped he would learn what he needed to know in time.
“Declare the emergency over,” said the bailiff, “and relieve me of duty, hire me as your counsel and advisor, so I can walk into the room with you at your elbow and talk with you on a private channel. I figure you might need more help. And while you are at it, appoint those three fellows as your honor guard.”
So saying, he went again to the vestry and donned the red robe, long wig, and black cap of a professional solicitor but did not remove the insectlike air mask and goggles.
“I cannot enter armed, but you can and must.” And he returned the sword and scabbard to Vigil with a bow.
There was a roar of trumpets as the great doors swung open.
2. The Table
The Chamber was magnificent, overadorned, overwhelming. The design came from a time far older than the sparse and severe simplicity of the Patricians.
The chandelier at the apex was shaped like a spiral galaxy and burned with atomic points of light, a symbol of the Stability’s eternity. The dome was paneled in dark brass and held up by statues of the gods.
Largest of all, and occupying the northeast quarter of the dome, was an onyx statue of Triumvirate, with his three heads, wearing many crowns. The first had the pointed chin, the long, slanted eyes, and long-lobed ears of a Hierophant; the second was an oddly angular and grinning face of what a male Fox Maiden would look like, were there any males of that race; and the third was a hirsute Hibernal with braided locks and beard that covered all but his eyes. In each of his eighty-one hands he held a knotwork of a different aspect or figure of cliometry notation, and all his lower hands held the lotus of enlightenment or the barbed arrow of Darwin, always pointing upward.
Facing him were the three Principalities of Man. Directly opposite Triumvirate loomed a statue hewn of deceptive blue apatite of Zauberring, in the conical cap, celestial mantle and charming wand of a warlock. To the southeast loomed a red coral statue of Toliman in his Phrygian cap with his bindlestaff, depicted as a silenus, a satyr with horse legs kicked up as if frozen in frantic dance. To the northwest, hewn of ivory and amber overlaid with black pearl and red coral, loomed solemn Consecrate, garbed in the white habit and red scapular and of a Sister of the Annunciation, with a black veil drawn close about her head and four crescent moons above.
An inner and lower ring upheld smaller statues of the six Powers: Twelve in his dark helm and in his hands shut with locks the grimoire of fate; Cerulean in his mortarboard and scholar’s hood; Immaculate in her blue veil and mantle of stars; Peacock like an empress garbed in her polychromatic robes; Vonrothbarth in his owl cloak and goggles; and old Neptune holding his conch of triumph aloft, breaking chains and fetters with his trident.
Lower still were smaller statuettes of the twenty-four Potentates, four to each side: Mars in red helm with lance and shield; Aesculapius leaning on his caduceus; Rossycross in the mail and surcoat of a crusader; Nocturne in black, crowned in stars; and December in white, money bag and abacus in hand; Odette and Odile, dark twin and bright, each in her feathered robes; Walpurgis in his goblin mask and gaberlunzie hat; and Cyan in blue, tonsured like a Mandarin, holding a grain sheaf. Eurotas and Perioecium were armed as Mars, their father world; Feast of Stephen was in a bishop’s miter, garbed in a cope of ermine-trimmed red. Eden was arrayed as a queen mother, dressed all in green, crowned in skulls and flowers. And ten others.
Torment was a slender maiden in a bridal gown of green and gold, adorned with a coronet of septfoil blossoms, but wore the hood of Jack Ketch. In her hands was a headman’s axe, and from her girdle hung pilliwinks and pear; a wheel was to one side of her, and to the other, a hoop of Skeffington’s gyves.
For the first time, in all his life, seeing her figure arrayed with all her sister worlds and brothers, Vigil wondered at her horrifying aspect and who had christened her.
In the center of this triple hexagon of godlike beings, the massive black metallic six-sided table squatted on its six thick legs. It was orichalchum, an alloy the same as that from which the strandworld of Zauberring was made, by legend, indestructible.
The floor was made of blocks of glass on top of which the furniture and figures in the chamber seemed to float.
Guest lamps by the silvery doors, which opened for the Lord Landing Party Senior and no man else, were blazing white, and the globes fanned their wings, the trees swayed, and the serpents of Hermetic heraldry hissed.
Vigil stepped forward, feeling every ounce of the weight of his father’s office.