encouraging smile, “I believe we are concluded here.”
2. Palace
Oramen was in a round room in the shade wing of the royal palace in Pourl when they came to tell him that his father and his elder brother were dead and he would, in time, be king. He had always liked this room because its walls described an almost perfect circle and, if you stood at its very centre, you could hear your own voice reflected back at you from the chamber’s circumference in a most singular and interesting fashion.
He looked up from his papers at the breathless earl who’d burst into the room and broken the news. The earl’s name was Droffo, from Shilda, if Oramen was not mistaken. Meanwhile a couple of the palace servants piled into the room behind the nobleman, also breathing hard and looking flushed. Oramen sat back in his seat. He noticed it was dark outside. A servant must have lit the room’s lamps.
“Dead?” he said. “Both of them? Are you sure?”
“If all reports are to be believed, sir. From the army command and from tyl Loesp himself. The King is – the King’s body is returning on a gun carriage, sir,” Droffo told him. “Sir, I’m sorry. It’s said poor Ferbin was cut in half by a shell. I am so sorry, sir, sorry beyond words. They are gone.”
Oramen nodded thoughtfully. “But I am not king?”
The earl, who to Oramen looked dressed half for court and half for war, looked confused for a moment. “No, sir. Not until your next birthday. Tyl Loesp will rule in your name. As I understand it.”
“I see.”
Oramen took a couple of deep breaths. Well, now. He had not prepared himself for this eventuality. He wasn’t sure what to think. He looked at Droffo. “What am I supposed to do? What is my duty?”
This, too, seemed to flummox the good earl, just for an instant. “Sir,” he said, “you might ride out to meet the King’s bier.”
Oramen nodded. “I might indeed.”
“It is safe, sir; the battle is won.”
“Yes,” Oramen said, “of course.” He rose, and looked beyond Droffo to one of the servants. “Puisil. The steam car, if you would.”
“Take a little while to get steam up,” Puisil said. “Sir.”
“Then don’t delay,” Oramen told him reasonably. The servant turned to go just as Fanthile, the palace secretary appeared. “A moment,” Fanthile told the servant, causing Puisil to hesitate, his gaze flicking between the young prince and the elderly palace secretary.
“A charger might be the better choice, sir,” Fanthile told Oramen. He smiled and bowed to Droffo, who nodded back at the older man. Fanthile was balding and his face was heavily lined, but he was still tall and carried his thin frame proudly.
“You think?” Oramen said. “The car will be quicker, surely.”
“The mount would be more immediate, sir,” Fanthile said. “And more fitting. One is more public on a mount. The people will need to see you.”
One can stand up in the back of my father’s steam car, Oramen considered saying. But he saw the sense in what was being proposed.
“Also,” Fanthile continued, seeing the prince hesitate and deciding to press, “the road may be crowded. A mount will slip through spaces—”
“Yes, of course,” Oramen said. “Very well. Puisil, if you would.”
“Sir.” The servant left.
Oramen sighed and boxed his papers. His day had largely been taken up with working on a novel form of musical notation. He had been kept, with the rest of the household, in the cellars of the palace during the early morning, when the Deldeyn had first been expected to break out from the nearby Tower, in case things went badly and they had to flee through subterranean tunnels to a fleet of steam vehicles waiting ready in the city’s lower reaches, but then they had been allowed out when, as expected, the enemy had been met with such prepared force they had soon ceased to be a threat to the city and their attention became focused instead on their own survival.
Mid-morning, he’d been persuaded to climb to a balustraded roof with Shir Rocasse, his tutor, to look out over the stepped palace grounds and the higher reaches of the hilltop city towards the Xiliskine Tower and the battleground that – telegraph reports now stated – stretched almost all around it.
But there had been little to see. Even the sky had appeared entirely devoid of action. The great battle-flocks of caude and lyge that had filled the ancient airs and made the battles of yesteryear