A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (68 page)

Azeel had made no move. She stared at Ormuz’s holdall.

“She won’t wait forever,” he said.

Azeel turned to him. “I believed you when you said you were a prole,” she said, voice flat. “You’re very good at it.” She lifted her eyes and he saw tears begin to bead in them. “Did you have fun?” she asked.

“I
am
a prole,” Ormuz replied, hurt by her reaction.

“You’re a Vonshuan!” Azeel hissed. “
She
said so.” She folded her arms tightly across her bosom and blinked repeatedly.

“I’m a prole.” He growled in exasperation. “It’s complicated.”

“Doesn’t seem complicated to
me
.”

“I’m not really a Vonshuan. Casimir Ormuz is the name I was born with. If I called myself Vonshuan, it’d be arrogation.”

Azeel frowned as she considered this. “Arrogation?” Abruptly, her face went blank as realisation struck. “Oh. Of course. You’re a by-blow.”

“No! Well, yes.” If that made sense to her, Ormuz decided, then best let her think it.

“And the duchess?”

“Marchioness, she’s a marchioness. She’s my, er, father’s sister. My aunt, yes. My aunt.”

Azeel took one of Ormuz’s forearms with both hands. “Why are you going with her? You’re still a prole, no matter who your father was. You could stay here.” Her hands squeezed his arm in anguish. “Especially since it’s
him
. That’s not a relationship you really want to tell people about it.”

“You’re coming too,” Ormuz replied.

“I can’t leave my job, I can’t leave the pub.”

“Why not? Lady Mayna will clear it with your liege. You’re still on holiday anyway, so a couple days won’t make any difference.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Azeel snorted. “I can’t go live in a marchioness’s house.”

Ormuz crossed to the wardrobe and took a second holdall from the top shelf. He crossed to the chest of drawers and pulled open the top drawer. Scooping up handfuls of feminine underwear, he shoved them into the bag. From the wardrobe, he took dresses and skirts and jackets, and piled them on the bed.

“We need more bags,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Azeel asked plaintively. She glanced at the garments mounded on the bed.

“Yes, I’m sure. I told her I wanted you to come with me and she agreed. You heard her.”

“Marchionesses don’t make bargains with proles.”

“This one did. Now, let’s get your stuff packed.”

Azeel hurried from the bedroom and returned moments later with another pair of empty holdalls which had seen decades of use. Reluctantly, she collected her many pairs of shoes from the wardrobe and turned about.

Ormuz told her to go ahead. He was busy emptying the drawers.

By the time they had finished, three of the holdalls contained Azeel’s wardrobe and Ormuz’s attire filled only half of the last. He sighed as he hefted the bag, remembering the trunks of clothing he and Varä had bought on Kapuluan all those weeks ago. None of it had survived the destruction of
Vengeful
, but some of it had been replaced aboard
Empress Glorina
. And subsequently left there when he walked out on the Admiral.

They carried a pair of bags each down to the pub, Ormuz chivalrously taking the heaviest two. No sooner had he exited the door from the stairs then a man in Vonshuan livery stepped forward and took his holdalls from him.

He and Azeel—now also freed of her luggage—approached Lady Mayna. Ormuz took Azeel’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “We’re ready,” he said.

“So I see.” Lady Mayna sighed. She raised a hand and beckoned one of her entourage forward. An old woman, dressed in a dark suit, with grey hair in a neat chignon pierced by a pair of quills, approached. She wore no escutcheon.

“Apula, contact the young lady’s liege and explain her change in circumstances. As for you, Casimir, where in heavens did you get that coat of arms from? Surely that’s not the one you wore before.”

Ormuz fingered his escutcheon. “From a, ah, friend. You needn’t worry about it. I’ll keep it for the time-being.”

If Lady Mayna’s intentions were not to his taste, he could always leave. The coat of arms gave him access to money should he need it.

“Let us go, then,” Lady Mayna declared.

She turned and swept regally from the Empress Glorina.

Lady Mayna’s aerolaunch lifted from the street. Ormuz looked up through the aerocraft’s glass roof and saw the sides of tenements, the pillars supporting the elevated railway, scroll past. He lowered his head and peered through the large circular port beside his chair. The railway itself hove into view, slid from the top to the bottom of the port, and was gone. They were above the city now. He could see all the way across Chikogu, across Toshi. The bright ribbons of the roads. The rocky islands that were Rook and Ministries and Congress, and other noble eyries whose names he did not know. And there, forming the near horizon, the jagged escarpment which circled Gahara.

The aerolaunch swung about and began to accelerate towards the mountains.

He squeezed Azeel’s hand and glanced at her. She smiled tremulously, but her eyes were shining. He released her hand, snaked his arm about her waist and hugged her. Looking away, he saw Lady Mayna, lounging stylishly in the wide leather seat opposite, but he could not interpret the expression on her face. It had satisfaction in it; and hunger, perhaps.

Had he made a mistake? He had been happy, in a fashion, in the Empress Glorina. With Innelda Azeel. True, it had been an effort to act the prole every day, and the prospect of doing so for the rest of his life had lain heavily on him—for all his professed easy acceptance of his loss of status.

Yet there was a puzzle here. Lady Mayna clearly loved her brother—enough to take his clone under her wing, although he and Ahasz were very different men. But in the nomosphere, she had actively schemed against the duke. She had made Ormuz what he was now. She had given him his mastery with the sword, his proficiency with the language of nobles, with the instinct for etiquette and behaviour necessary for a person of noble birth. Lady Mayna had, effectively, been instrumental in putting her brother in the House of Rectitude.

The aerolaunch passed over Gahara’s encircling hills. Ormuz twisted his head, the better to see down through the port. This, then, was the most prestigious part of Toshi, where all the highest nobles had their palaces and townhouses. It did not appear all that different to Chikogu. The buildings were larger, and in better repair, but the streets were still narrow and the houses tall, with many storeys and flat roofs.

The aerocraft approached one such roof. Ormuz judged it to be five storeys above the street. Painted on a deck in the centre of the roof was a symbol identifying it as a landing dock. The aerolaunch slowed as it drew near the building until it hung motionless above the dock. Ropes unravelled from fore and aft. People appeared on the dock, took the ropes, and attached them to small winches. The aerocraft began to smoothly descend.

Stepping out of the aerolaunch, Ormuz felt a brief moment of vertigo. There was no railing about the dock and he could imagine a fifty foot drop from the edge to stone streets. He turned as a hand took his arm and found Lady Mayna beside him.

“This way, my dear,” she said, and turned him about to where a trapdoor had opened in the dock’s surface, revealing a gentle ramp down into the townhouse’s interior. “Let’s see about getting you out of those horrible proletarians rags and into something more fitting to your station.”

Leaving Azeel to follow, Ormuz allowed himself to be led into Lady Mayna’s townhouse. They descended the ramp into an entrance hall. Lady Mayna’s staff and escort seemed to evaporate, leaving the marchioness, Ormuz and Azeel alone. It was an unexpectedly masculine space, panelled throughout in wood, with portraits of stern-looking ancestors hung on the walls to left and right. Beneath each painting sat a wing-necked leather armchair.

Lady Mayna led the way to an elevator shaft and stepped into it. A platform appeared beneath her feet. Once her two guests had joined her, the lift began to descend. It halted on the third floor.

“Your room is that one there with the open door,” she said, indicating the room with a languid gesture. “I have business to attend to, so I shall leave you to settle in.”

Ormuz took Azeel’s hand and stepped from the lift. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the marchioness slowly and silently descend from sight. He turned back to look at the open double-doors ahead. Hand in hand, they walked towards it, along a corridor also panelled in a dark wood which seemed to drink in the summery glow of the light-panels. The thick maroon carpetted swallowed the sound of their footfalls.

They halted in the doorway of the room, and Ormuz reflected on the differences between the homes of proles and those of the high nobility. The upstairs flat at the Empress Glorina had comprised small, over-furnished rooms, comfortable if disordered. This drawing-room was as big as the Azeels’ entire apartment, but sparsely furnished for its size. A clutch of spindly sofas, clearly antiques, were grouped before a marble fireplace. A huge bureau occupied the wall opposite the fireplace, chairs were arranged against one wall, while in the wall opposite the door were three great windows. They gave a view out to sea, between the mountainous walls cupping Gahara Bay.

Azeel gasped. They walked forward and the hushed stillness of the room lent it an unreal aspect. Azeel turned away from him, and then pulled him about to face another set of double-doors. She started toward them.

The bedroom.

Azeel halted on the threshold. The bed was twice the size of the one Ormuz had shared with Azeel at the pub. It was covered with an embroidered counterpane depicting the Vonshuan winged snake.

Azeel pulled her hand from Ormuz. She ran forwards and, with a squeal, threw herself full-length onto the bed. She rolled onto her back, kicked her shoes from her feet and laughed.

“Oh Cas,” she said in wonder. “It’s fantastic!”

He crossed to the bed, sat on it beside her and put a hand on one hosed thigh. “Have we made a mistake?” he asked.

“She’s not put us in servant quarters! It’s amazing.” She swung onto her hip, her stomach pressed warmly against Ormuz’s side. “How can
this
be a mistake?” she demanded. “Oh it’s like some silly melodrama. Even if it only lasts a day, I’ll never forget it.
Never
.”

She sat up suddenly, threw her arms about Ormuz’s neck and kissed him.

Lady Mayna rose gracefully from the sofa and gestured Ormuz closer. She had changed her jacket and trousers for a long dress in forest-green, tight-fitting about her narrow waist, high-necked, and long-sleeved with built-in gloves. Serpentine designs in glossy thread of a darker green wove their way across the bodice.

“Please, sit,” Lady Mayna said.

Ormuz gave a quick bow—supplicant to grateful host, both of high rank. Lady Mayna let out a peal of delighted laughter. Ormuz lowered himself into the sofa opposite the marchioness.

For the first time since disembarking from
Empress Glorina
—the battleship not the pub—he felt relaxed. The clothes he now wore, a simple shirt and trousers, provided by Lady Mayna, were of high quality. He had worn similar aboard the battleship and
Vengeful
. He even had a sword hanging from his hip. It was perhaps a more ornate blade than he was used to, but he had checked and found its balance good and its point sharp.

Azeel remained upstairs in their suite, trying on items from the wardrobe provided her.

“We need to lay out a plan of action,” Lady Mayna said. “I’m told you comport yourself excellently and speak like a noble born.”

Ormuz said nothing.

“I also hear you’re a master swordsman.” Lady Mayna smiled. “But I very much doubt you’ll be needing to demonstrate that.”

“You should know,” Ormuz put in. “You made me one. You also taught me how to speak.”

“I did?” Lady Mayna raised an eyebrow and smiled. “But today is the first time we’ve met.”

“In person, perhaps. We met several times in the nomosphere.”

“So we did.” She gestured the acknowledgment away, as if it were an irrelevancy. “But we best not mention that. That is… information to be kept among us.”

“The Empress knows of it.”

“It is of no use to her now,” replied Lady Mayna dismissively. “We need to see about raising your status. I can sponsor you to yeoman. The Electorate may balk but I have my allies. Lifting you to a title—oh, I have many so finding a suitable one will not be a problem… As to that, we may encounter some problems. It will take time.”

“Why?” asked Ormuz.

“Why? Because it’s simply not done. There is much preparation required.”

“No, I mean: why are you doing this? What difference to you is it if I’m a prole, a yeoman or a noble?”

“Don’t be silly, Casimir. How can I socialise with you if you’re a prole?”

He leaned forward, putting a hand to his sword so it didn’t knock his knee. “But I
am
a prole,” he insisted. “I was born one.”

Lady Mayna sighed in exasperation. “This is getting tiresome, Casimir. You have spent a year pretending to be a prince.” She raised a finger in admonishment. “Yes, I have my sources. They called you ‘Prince Casimir’ aboard
Vengeful
, did they not? I know Flavia, the Empress, rejected you, but this…
flaunting
of your proletarian status will not bring her back.”

“I’m not flaunting it,” Ormuz replied mulishly.

“My dear, I am fully cognisant of the details of your birth, but you seem determined to make a point of it. This poor girl you’ve dragged along with you: you’re using her like an escutcheon, she’s your badge to show your proletarian rank. It’s very cruel of you. And very unfair on her.”

Ormuz stiffened. “No,” he protested. “I love her.”

“Do you really? She’s quite unsuitable, you know. I can’t introduce you into polite society with her at your side. It’s simply not possible.”

“She stays.”

He was not going to give up Azeel. He needed someone uncomplicated at his side. No, that was unfair. Azeel was not simple. But her relationship with him was uncomplicated. Lady Mayna wanted something from him—he did not believe she was driven by a need to replace the brother she would soon lose. But he could not see what possible use he might be to her.