Chapter Text
Soldiers of Astandalas had always aspired to serve in the Palace Guard. It was widely regarded as a cushy number, sedentary, the barracks fine and spacious, and the opportunity to swank around in half- or full- panoply on a daily basis. The leopard pelts, onyx belt, and gleaming white kilts were a well-known aphrodisiac, particularly when paired with the physique and glowing good health the Guard selected for.
Those in less fortunate postings were inclined to sneer that the Guard were soft, seldom tested on the battlefield (never mind that many of them were promoted from other ranks due to acts of extreme valour), vain and lazy.
Guard Hiscaron wished that he had every single one of those doubters in this room, right now, and could share with them every last hair-tearing detail of the current predicament. The Situation - it had graduated to a capital-S situation a few weeks ago - was, unbelievably, getting worse.
The chief duty of the Palace Guard - their greatest, most honourable, and overriding duty - was to serve and protect His Imperial Serenity, Artorin Damara, Last Emperor of Astandalas and Lord Magus of Zunidh.
When the Empire of Astandalas Fell in a storm of fire, magic, and blood, the Palace of Stars and all its inhabitants had quite literally fallen out of the enchanted Vale of Ysthar and landed on another world entirely, Zunidh of the Wide Seas, on top of what had been the tiny village of Solaara next to the Necropolis where Emperors were traditionally buried. Nobody had appreciated the symbolism, not when the Last Emperor himself fallen with his Empire, struck down into a dark dreaming state, improbably sustained by magic for a hundred years of sleep.
The Palace Guard had come through the Fall two-thirds intact; the benefit of the rota system being that one third were on duty and one third asleep in the Palace at the time, with only a third out in the great city of Astandalas celebrating the festival of Silverheart. The rest of the Palace community had not been so fortunate: most of the officials and nobles who made up the court and the government had been at one party or another, with only the ill or chronically unpopular in the building.
As far as could be ascertained, they were the largest group of survivors from Ysthar of the Magic - one half-empty building, all that survived an entire world. In the tearing chaos the guard closed ranks and kept order, following the lead of those pillars of government that survived - the senior mages who made up the Ouranatha, the Princess Indrogan who took hold of the reins of the bureaucracy, all together under the leadership of the Lady Jivane, the Lady Magus of Zunidh.
The Emperor’s guard became an uncomfortable posting indeed, if still most honourable, watching over the still form of the sleeping Emperor as the world outside reeled drunkenly through the cascading fallout from the greatest disaster the Nine Worlds had ever known.
Hiscaron had been a new recruit, raw, if presentable, back when the juniors had put in long shifts in the Throne Room, guarding the bier. These days the memory was tinged with a faint but palpable nostalgia. It had all been so much simpler then, when the Emperor didn’t move around, and he didn’t have a household, and he didn’t have a fucking secretary.
The fucking secretary in question, Cliopher Sayo Mdang, was perched neatly on a chair in an office that Hiscaron and his squadmate Tuah had commandeered to run their investigation. Their investigation into an assassination attempt that Sayo Mdang was disconcertingly - hair-raisingly - Hiscaron-had-run-out-of-adverbially - nonchalant about, despite clear evidence that he was the intended target.
“Sayo Mdang,” Hiscaron repeated, reproachfully. “Somebody tried to kill you.”
Mdang looked like he wanted to argue, but even he had to concede that much.
“Sorry,” he said. “I am taking this seriously - it’s just - that really doesn’t narrow it down. In recent months I have discomforted the military mages who report to General Ravillon, offended the General himself, been appointed into one of the most sought-after posts in the government by a man who hates me and resents my success, pushed most of the Upper Secretariat off balance and directly caused the Treasurer to be reprimanded in person by the Glorious One. And I suspect that I have - annoyed - the Ouranatha, as well. The only powerful figure at court who might not be happy if I - disappear - is Princess Indrogan.”
Hiscaron felt that he had given the Situation every ounce of phlegmatic resignation he had to give, so he allowed himself to slump back against the wall, close his eyes, and take a deep breath.
Cliopher Mdang did not on the surface look like the kind of charge who routinely gave his protectors nightmares. He looked like a fifth degree secretary, a mild-mannered Imperial Servant, a little short, a little stocky, not unfit. The only thing that was at all unusual, for a senior official, was his light brown skin and Islander features.
Members of the Palace Guard, like the Astandalan military more generally, had always been drawn from all the cultures and peoples of the Empire. The bureaucracy, by contrast, was close enough to the aristocracy to be considerably more snobbish about these things. Many noble families sent a second or third child into the Service, and most of the Upper Secretariat was pure ethnic Shaian, with a few interlopers from the most senior aristocrats of other peoples absorbed by Astandalas.
No Wide Sea Islander family would be counted as aristocratic by Imperial standards. The mere fact of Cliopher Mdang being here, being appointed as Imperial Secretary, should have been a clue that he was something out of the ordinary. That, and the fact that he had turned out to be extremely good at the job.
Tuah, who was still at the angry-disbelief stage, said, “in that case, what the hell are you doing wandering about the Palace by yourself?”
Mdang shrugged and pointed out that his job took him around the Palace, and also that he had not actually expected any of his highly impressive list of potential enemies to actually make an attempt, “or that they’d make such a mess of it.”
He sounded mildly disapproving at the clumsiness of his potential murderer, like a great dame complaining about the lack of good servants available since the Fall. Hiscaron tried not to grind his teeth.
Mdang also refused to ask anybody to accompany him, on grounds that that might put someone else at risk. That should have felt like a concession, since it admitted that there was a risk, but when Hiscaron replied that he should take a guard, who would be able to protect both of them, the secretary gave it some brief thought and refused on grounds that it would make it difficult for him to do his job. Nothing doing there, then. The man’s devotion to his work was almost as terrifying as his sang-froid.
Hiscaron had never thought much, before, about what the Emperor’s secretary did. To be fair, all the candidates who came through before this fucking secretary had been ornamentally useless. Noble birth and the ability to hold a brush or a pen were the only criteria he would have guessed mattered. Early candidates had mostly been arrogant and excited; then, as his Radiancy dismissed one after another in disgrace - and after one poor sod tripped over the taboos and got themself executed for their trouble - the excitement had given way to fear. The arrogance had been a constant, though. Secretaries came, they hovered about for a little while pissing people off, then they went. Keeping their heads if they were lucky.
Then… Sayo Mdang. Polite, soft-spoken, and earnest. He hadn’t been appointed as a sop to a noble family, or on the basis of a fat bribe. He had turned up early on his first day of work, charmed the pages, and gone to sit in an old office rewriting all the morning reports. That by itself would have been enough to make him the subject of Tower gossip for months.
Sayo Mdang thanked Hiscaron and Tuah for their trouble. Sayo Mdang was not going to need anybody to accompany him this afternoon. Sayo Mdang was going to take a turn in the gardens, and then probably head up to the Minister in Chief’s Private Office for the rest of the work day, although he might need to step out to meet with officials from the Ministry of Justice, and from Health, at some point in the afternoon.
It was, alas, not permissible to physically nail Sayo Mdang to a desk in the barracks and require all these senior officials to come and meet him there.
Hiscaron and Tuah watched him leave, then looked at one another. Tuah sighed. “My turn,” he said, and followed.
The unofficial Mdang watch was the first part of the Situation that had developed, and it was mostly Hiscaron’s creation.
He and Tuah were both outer guard, permitted to wear the greater panoply and stand at the great black and gold fortified doors with the enormous emblazoned sun-in-glory motif that marked the entrance to the Imperial Apartments. Between them, their guard partners, and the Emperor’s person, another pair of outer guards held each of the seven doors of the seven formal anterooms. The only posting more honourable was the inner guard, stationed inside the Apartments, accompanying the Emperor night and day.
Tuah and his usual partner Hlinar had been on the door the first morning Mdang turned up. They had taken a kindness to the man from the start. Admittedly, it was rare to meet a bureaucrat who talked to a guard as if they were fellow human beings. Mdang had been wryly humorous and had won them both over in a brief exchange.
The guards had been disturbed, therefore, when Mdang fled the Imperial Apartments at the end of the morning, without his writing kit and evidently in some distress. After shift change Tuah come storming through to the mess room and demanded to know what on earth Sayo Mdang had been fired for.
Hiscaron, who had not yet met Mdang, had not been unduly surprised by a secretary-candidate being sent away after the first morning - there had been one recently who was dismissed in the middle of making their first obeisances, mere seconds after coming into the Presence for the first time - but he had been surprised to find Tuah and Hlinar so upset about it.
When Ludvic, one of the morning’s inner guard, came in, he was instantly surrounded.
“What did he do?” asked Tuah.
Ludvic frowned at them. “Who?” he asked.
“Sayo Mdang! What happened?”
Ludvic hesitated a barely perceptible fraction of a second before saying, “a good morning’s work,” and stalking off.
“But why was he fired?” Hlinar called after him.
“He wasn’t,” said Ludvic shortly, without turning round.
That was intriguing enough to keep Hiscaron's attention away from his book, though It wasn’t until Ludvic’s partner Sergei came back up from speaking to the Master of Offices - and returning Sayo Mdang’s writing kit - that the mess room heard more of the story.
Sergei made them wait while he collected a coffee, found a seat, and invoked guard’s confidentiality. “And on this one I mean it,” he said, “not a word. Not to your best mate. Not to your best girl, or best boy, or whatever. Not to your old mum. Nobody talks.” And, when they had all nodded or muttered agreement, slightly cowed by his ferocity, he leaned back in his chair and grinned and said, “Sayo Mdang looked the Emperor in the eye.”
There was a shocked silence.
“By mistake…?” asked Hlinar.
“On purpose,” said Sergei, with satisfaction.
The silence that followed this extraordinary pronouncement was both stunned and impressed. Sergei, looking pleased at the effect his story was having, went on. “They were working together - neat as anything - all morning. Himself pacing up and down, you know the way he has, and Sayo Mdang scribbling away, nice and quiet, and you could tell it was going well, and - oh, I nearly forgot this bit - and first of all, his Radiancy is listing out all these places, and he says something about the Vonyabe, and Sayo Mdang pipes up cool as a cucumber and tells him it’s the Vangavaye-ve, actually, very respectful but…” Sergei waved his hand as if to convey something of the strength of his emotions at watching a mild-mannered government official calmly correct the pronunciation of the Sun on Earth.
“Ludvic said he wasn’t fired!”
“He wasn’t! His Radiancy just said thanks, and they carried on - you can tell Sayo Mdang isn’t a noble, right? So he’s not quite talking like they do, but the Emperor doesn’t seem to mind, and then - then - lads, it’s the end of the morning and Sayo Mdang is clearing his desk, and they’re both looking pleased with themselves, and the Emperor says something nice, and Mdang makes a stupid joke, and then the Emperor jokes back. You know the kind of thing, just banter, and they’ve both sort of lit up, and I suppose it gets too much for Mdang and he just looks right up into his Radiancy’s eyes.”
Someone let out an appreciative whistle. It might have been Hiscaron, come to think of it.
“...and?”
“And there’s a bit of a snap, and like a kind of fizz - you know what I mean, magical reaction - and then Sayo Mdang realises what he’s done and sort of folds over and rushes off as soon as he’s dismissed, and his Radiancy tells us to send after him with his writing kit and confirm his appointment. If he’s still fit for it.”
“Fuck me,” breathed Tuah, “how is he?”
“I dunno,” Sergei grimaced, “no idea where he went, nor yet where his rooms are. I went down to the Master of Offices - he’ll know - and told him to send word back when he’s tracked Mdang down.”
As far as Hiscaron was concerned, that should have been the end of it. He was on reserve rota for the afternoon and on duty that night, and was expecting to settle in for a nice quiet read until and unless some emergency came up. His battered old detective novel had to stay in his bag for a while, however, because Tuah and Hlinar, who should have gone off duty, hung around and wanted to talk about Mdang.
Hiscaron, who was fairly sure that he was mere pages away from figuring out whodunnit, eventually shooed them off with a promise to send word when any news came back on whether the secretary-candidate had been blinded by his absurdly casual attitude to the death magic that wrapped around the Glorious One.
Which meant, in turn, that he was on edge all afternoon, and couldn’t settle back to his reading. Broc Biranor, the hard bitten detective of old Astandalas, would just have to do without him for an afternoon. When no word came, and he had to go on duty, he made Ser Ergaz promise to keep an ear out overnight.
He had always enjoyed the night watches, when the corridors were still and empty and the mage lights - or torches, when the magic was on the blink - blazed. But that night he had not, quite, been able to let go of the niggling worry about Sayo Mdang. It seemed like such a shame, such a waste, for this to happen to the first maybe-competent secretary-candidate they’d had. It was also frustrating, to say the least, that the Master of Offices had been so slow about sending word.
Some time around the middle watches Hiscaron suddenly wondered what Sergei had actually said to Lord Meriloe. A member of the inner guard would not have wanted to advertise that Sayo Mdang had broken a great taboo, not when his Radiancy liked the man and the priest-wizards were so… ardent about enforcing the magical boundaries. Perhaps he had been too soft-spoken, and Lord Meriloe had not realised that it was a matter of urgency.
When Hiscaron came off duty at the dawn quarter bell, he found Ser Ergaz hovering by the messenger station, looking worried. “We’ve heard nothing. I’ve just sent a page to Lord Meriloe - saying someone will be coming down to his office to have a chat. I’d go, but it’s my daughter’s birthday and I said I’d be there this morning…”
“I’ll go,” Hiscaron had offered at once, glad to have a way to get this settled. He was beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable about this lack of communication, which stank to high heaven when you thought about it. The first time any of them had seen a good secretary for his Radiancy - that in itself was out of character for the Master of Offices - and now Meriloe was dragging his feet?
The parts of the palace inhabited by clerks and bureaucrats were quiet in the grey early-morning light, the Administrative Office almost empty, though Hiscaron had arrived almost at the same time as Lord Meriloe, who was about to go into his inner office.
“My lord,” he called.
Meriloe turned and came back across the room, scowling, almost stamping his feet. In the face of bristling aristocratic self-importance, Hiscaron drew himself up into wooden Imperial Guard mode. “My lord, I am bidden to ask after the wellbeing of secretary-candidate Sayo Mdang and ensure that he has received all the medical attention he requires.” No need to clarify that the immediate request came from his fellow guards; he could go back and get a written order from the Tower if necessary.
Lord Meriloe had drawn himself up in hauteur and snapped, ““How dare you! How dare you! I am here, aren’t I, at this ungodly hour? I am responsible for appointments. I am responsible for ensuring that the Glorious One gets the respect he deserves! There must be some mistake.”
Hiscaron kept his wooden-face on with difficulty and spoke politely. He was there as a representative of the Tower. Not his business to stir up trouble with stinking politics, and slimy politicians. “A mistake, Lord Meriloe? Yesterday his Radiancy confirmed the appointment of your chosen secretary-candidate, if he is well, and sent to return his writing kit. We have been awaiting word ever since.”
Meriloe started to splutter something further, but Hiscaron was not listening because there, coming up behind the Master of Offices, was Sayo Mdang.
Hiscaron had only seen Cliopher Mdang briefly the day before. Like several other people, he’d slipped out of the mess room to take a peek at the astonishing sight of a member of the Imperial Service turning up early, and actually doing some work.
The man was impeccably groomed again today, his fifth degree linen robes crisp, his hat perfectly puffed and perched at exactly the correct angle, and he was looking in confusion between Meriloe and Hiscaron, with eyes that might be a little bloodshot but were clearly functioning perfectly well.
“Sayo Mdang! You are here! Are you well?” Hiscaron was surprised by the strength of his own relief. He told himself that it was because he felt bad for any poor sod caught up in Meriloe’s stupid posturing. And Tuah would have moped unbearably, if Mdang had been blinded. And it would be a crying shame to lose someone his Radiancy actually liked.
Mdang was clearly not, despite his protests, entirely well. He had an unhealthy ashen cast to his face, saggy dark shadows round his eyes, and he was swaying slightly on his feet. Hiscaron had a horrible suspicion about who was responsible for this.
He glared at Meriloe, who ground out with evident reluctance the news that Sayo Mdang had been permanently appointed to the Emperor. To Hiscaron’s disgust, this was clearly the first that Sayo Mdang had heard of his appointment.
Lord Meriloe fumed and forgot himself to the point of attempting to lay hands upon the newly appointed Imperial Secretary. Hiscaron carefully controlled his anger and channelled it towards drawing the necessary line in Meriloe’s mind: this man is the Emperor’s now, and he is under the protection of the Tower.
As soon as they were out of the office and heading up the stairs Mdang thanked him - for doing his job! - and asked his name. Hiscaron just about kept his jaw from dropping. Mdang was hurrying along, trying to deal with what must be the most distressingly complicated morning of his life, and he wanted to know Hiscaron’s name.
Hiscaron left him ensconced in the morning reports, went back to the pages and growled something about running to fetch Sayo Mdang’s writing kit before the third bell, and then went off duty - after what felt like the longest rotation of his life - back to the barracks, where he felt he deserved a quiet morning in.
He sat staring at the same paragraph of his novel while his cocoa grew cold.
Mdang was something, all right.
At least he was part of the household now. Hiscaron reassured himself with the thought that there were hardly any safer postings in the Palace. The guards would keep an eye on him, fend off any petty vengeance that Meriloe had in mind.
Within days it became clear that this was optimistic. Sayo Mdang did not believe that his duty as secretary began and ended with his hours in the Emperor’s study. Sayo Mdang was not even content to work from one of the outer offices of the Tower and send pages for the things he needed. Sayo Mdang was going to meet regularly with Princess Indrogan. Sayo Mdang was touring government departments, stirring up the Upper Secretariat.
Every shift change soon included an item on what the hell Mdang was doing today, and where he could be found. Half the time, nobody knew. Within a week the regular item had graduated from That Secretary to That Fucking Secretary.
It took until the second week for the situation to escalate to the Situation. Sayo Mdang asked - politely, without fuss, as he always did - if he could have a word with Ludvic Omo. And then Ludvic came back with a face like thunder and reported that Mdang had encountered a hostile magic user. Somehow. In the Palace.
“He wanted to know whether we’d be able to tell if he was under a compulsion,” said Ludvic. “What the hell happened to him?”
Hiscaron shuddered. The magical protections around the Tower - let alone the Imperial Apartments - would have reacted vigorously to any hostile enchantment. They were designed to protect the Emperor, though, not the victim… the thought of gentle, earnest, friendly Sayo Mdang being blasted across the room was - well, it hadn’t happened, and he wasn’t going to think about that now.
“We have to keep an eye on him,” he blurted out, “we have to do something” He was only slightly surprised to find that the rest of the evening shift was in full agreement, including the inner guard.
“What are you thinking?” Ludvic asked.
They were all looking at him. Hiscaron swallowed. It was one thing to know that the Tower guard was expected to use their initiative, to go above and beyond, and quite another to be the person coming up with a plan that was certainly not covered by their standing orders.
He reminded himself that he knew a lot about investigations. Mostly from Broc Biranor, admittedly, but she was extremely good at her job. He could do this.
“Two things,” he had said. “Sayo Mdang isn’t going to ask us for help, so we have to check on him. Regularly. And - we need to figure out what happened, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“He wouldn’t tell me who,” Ludvic replied, thoughtfully, “but he said it was recent. And that it had been reported.”
Hiscaron found he had plenty of volunteers to help with the Situation. Suddenly, instead of sitting by himself with a book, he was holding court with a small knot of guards every time he entered the mess room, discussing what to do and how to do it. Between them they mapped out Mdang’s habits.
His room was out at the far end of the Alinorel wing, and he liked to walk through the gardens on his way there and back. The gardens were easy; there were routine patrols already, and the Commander readily agreed to adjust these to coincide with the ludicrously early morning and late evening slots when the Imperial Secretary wandered back and forth.
The mornings were easy too: once he came up to the Tower Mdang was pinned down under the standard Household protections for at least three hours. The inner guard reported that he continued to routinely commit minor breaches of protocol, up to and including such treasonous habits as cracking jokes, frequently locking eyes with the Sun on Earth, and lecturing the Emperor on accounting principles.
Hiscaron was not fully sure he believed everything he heard, except of course he did, because why wouldn’t a man who treated the Imperial guards as people take the same attitude to their Imperial master?
There was something indefatigable about Mdang, a persistence that you could crack your head on like a rock, a strength so totally different from the force of arms that the guards could bring to bear. It was compelling, and it made Hiscaron want to throttle him.
It was the afternoons that presented a challenge. Mdang came out of the Imperial Apartments like one of the tiny magic-and-spring propelled toys Hiscaron used to play with as a child: he pinged off in an apparently random direction, zipping along at a walking pace that was difficult to match without running. As no guard wanted to be seen running along the Palace corridors, risking a panic, they had to do their best to anticipate his direction. Hiscaron found himself regularly contemplating his ignorance with a sinking heart, and relying on the pages, and sometimes on junior officials, to tip him off.
Sayo Mdang seemed to be interested in getting to know the guards and the rest of the household, but when he stopped by the mess room he seldom let any hint of his plans or projects slip. Hiscaron did manage to ask a few innocuous questions about his recent assignments, but he very noticeably avoided the subject of magic or magic-users, apart from to say that he had no magic himself.
His most recent previous role had been a secondment into General Ravillon’s headquarters which had come to a sudden end the week he was assigned to the Tower. That was interesting, but not conclusive, and the Commander had forbidden Hiscaron to go asking the soldiers any leading questions.
Before the General, Mdang had worked in Princess Indrogan’s office and for Lord Meriloe. The Princess was notably tidy in her dealings and would be unlikely to fuck up to the extent of letting Mdang get away if he had attempted to report one of her people for magical malpractice. Hiscaron could quite easily imagine Lord Meriloe wanting to harm Mdang, but violence was not the Master of Office’s natural skillset. He was, at the end of the day, a corrupt bottom-feeder with a backbone of jelly.
It was a puzzle that even now, months later, they were no closer to figuring out, and that fucking secretary was still refusing any kind of guard detail, even though there had been an actual assassination attempt.
Hiscaron, alone in the investigation room, allowed himself to hold his head in his hands and groan. His hunch was that the rogue magic-user was someone in General Ravillon’s staff, which meant the investigation was essentially stymied unless he could talk the Commander round. He was still contemplating the unattractive prospect of going back to the Commander when Tuah came back, looking subdued.
“All’s well?”
“Oh? Yes… he’s fine. Out in the gardens, so I handed over to Shubaan.”
“What is it, then?”
Tuah was standing looking pensively at the smashed dispatch box. “He went over to the infirmary, first. Went and looked at Sayu Dinesh.”
The page who had been caught up in the attack. Hiscaron winced.
“And then he just went out and sat in the garden and had the shakes. By himself.” Tuah lifted his gaze and was staring now at something Hiscaron couldn’t see, but could imagine: that unremarkable, smiling, dauntless man in his dapper linen robes, shuddering with reaction, thinking that he was alone. Keeping everything in. Hiding it from his colleagues. Hiding from his guards whose job was to provide protection.
At this rate Hiscaron was going to solve the Situation by murdering Mdang himself.