To Your New Era

Time had made Provenance more accustomed to Empress Fanreth's growing visits, but the pitter-patter of padded hands and feet across his chamber's floors reignited his fears that court gossip was fast catching up to him, the beginning of a journey that ended with a chopping block.

The Empress watched her son roam the new space with a subdued glee; a maternal instinct that decades of training, and centuries of cosmetic development couldn't hide. She was frankly the most human she had ever looked, a world apart from the fanatical immaturity she wore when sitting in the palm of her husband's hand.

Provenance suspected the environment also had something to do with her mood, although that felt much further from a brag than it sounded. He leaned towards her, restarting a conversation that had peacefully drifted into the Aether a few minutes prior.

"Arna seems quite healthy," he muttered, watching the child wander in one direction after another, beady eyes following the lines of the room.

"My chief lady-in-waiting agrees," she said. "Assures me that the louder he cries, the healthier he is."

Provenance could attest—he'd seen the opposite more than he cared to admit. "And does he cry often?"

To this, she simply nodded, flashes of a thousand-yard stare in her eyes. One of the most powerful people in the world with a team of staff at her beck and call, yet still it took a village.

Arna gargled something regarding the telephone, and Provenance waited his turn to speak.

"Your men outside," he began tentatively. "They take kindly to the likes of me…being with the heir-apparent?"

"Precisely because they're my men," she said, the emphasis almost sounding like a provocation. Common wisdom said the emperor's men were loyal to the family alone; that went true for any aristocratic household. He feared another exercise in blind overconfidence, but another possibility revealed itself before he could voice it.

"Pardon me for asking, Your Majesty…were you originally red or grey?"

The Empress pouted. "At least pretend to struggle," she muttered. "But yes, I was originally red. The Emperor asked for my hand in marriage in an annexation deal. The fine print of the contract stated that my personal guard would hail from my family's men.

She turned to him again, sporting a sly smile. "But your fears aren't unfounded. A pair of his eyes exists right here," she said, pointing at her own.

Fanreth stood from her chair and shuffled towards Arna, picking him up off the floor and dusting off his hands and knees. She was smiling as she did so, in the small moment she thought she was out of Provenance's sight. When she returned, she'd already flattened the smile into something more proper.

Spending less time with his majesty only correlated with happiness given certain circumstances, none of which fit his idea of Fanreth. Through the years and myriad developments, he'd held his tongue, played the role of the faithful servant. Perhaps a servant's job was inherently intimate, but he wasn't idly standing in the corner, waiting for his master's beck and call; he was sitting right by her side.

Quiet happiness be damned; this was never supposed to be his issue.

"Has something happened since Arna was born?" he asked. "Between you and his majesty."

Fanreth chuckled, placing Arna on her lap and holding him like a teddy bear. "Why must you ask? You have your magic for a reason, don't you?"

"Perhaps…but sometimes I glean more from how somebody speaks the truth rather than the truth itself."

"How clever," she said, adjusting herself as Arna writhed about in her arms. She glanced down and loosened her grip, mouthing an apology as she held his hands between her fingers. For a few silent moments, enough for Provenance to believe the conversation had died, Fanreth returned reality to what she wanted as though she were a Spacehopper herself.

"Nothing 'happened' per se; his attention was needed elsewhere. The court, other concubines. He's always been a resourceful man, and I doubt his proposal to me was little more than a parlay with my father. It was wrong of me to assume I was deserving of special treatment."

She made playthings of her slender fingers, weaving them in and out of Arna's grasp as she spoke.

"I thought Arna's birth stole his attention from him. Because of that, I hardly laid eyes on him for the first year."

"And what made you change your mind?"

Fanreth didn't answer. Perhaps one more question was a bridge too far. The Empress, with her subtle influence over the room, seemed to slow minutes into hours, squeezing every drop she could from their time in a vice called silence. As intimate as it was, Provenance served little more purpose than the furniture did; a source of warmth worthier of attention than a servant. Not a host or a guest, but company in the most basic sense.

"You've changed," he muttered.

"Maybe," she said. "But I doubt I change that easily."

There, the telephone rang, its shrill echo overpowering Fanreth's hold and startling Arna to tears.

"Excuse me," Provenance said as he stood, but Fanreth was already preoccupied. He answered the phone, the reclaimed silence only making Arna's cries of health more apparent.

"Yes?" he said.

"Is that a child?" Antea muttered with an underlying current of disdain.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"I'm afraid so," he replied, watching Fanreth quickly leave the room, taking Arna's cries with her. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Little pleasure to be had, but thankfully our cover story is working overtime."

"Nobody suspects you?"

"No. Not as far as I can tell. Although I can't speak for everyone."

"No?"

"Special Operations may have taken matters into their own hands. As much as I'd like to pin the blame on somebody, I have no clue how much they already know. I can't risk such an inconsistency in the narrative."

The assessment was fair. Scope and predictability were constraints that kept law enforcement easy to subvert. Special Operations suffered from neither.

"Assuming they aren't more than a step behind you is good practice," Provenance said. "Especially since you've left the loudest steps for last."

Antea's wheezing chuckle was the closest Provenance would get to outright agreement. "The handover happens in the coming days. I will contact you when it is complete."

"One step closer to your dream, Antea."

"Are you trying to patronise me?"

"Not particularly...although you make yourself an easy target."

Stoic in his conduct of business, and he only ever conducted business. If prodding him was the only way to confirm he was sentient, then so be it. His manner of speaking was so transactional, Provenance sometimes forgot it was the other party who reached out first.

"Won't this cover story of yours erase any chances of the peace talks during the convention from succeeding? Let alone a ceasefire."

"I couldn't care less about making peace. It's the least of our worries."

"Then why did you ask me for help?" Provenance asked, deciding the bear wouldn't mind a few more nudges. "You clearly aren't a New Modernist."

"Because I heard you could give it," Antea replied. "If you're asking me about my motivation, it's irrelevant. We're working towards the same goal; that's all that matters."

"That's a heavy-handed assumption to make," Provenance said. "We barely know each other."

"I know," Antea said, before hanging up.

Elliot was at work for the next three days; Evalyn was out running an errand for eggs and milk. The wind chimes kept her company, and the creaking house spoke to her.

She'd brought her study to the living room and tolerated the wind licking her pages if it meant escaping the tendrils of that cursed document for just a bit longer. Still, study didn't capture her attention as readily as Colte's transcription, and soon after she sat down on the couch, she was already itching for a distraction.

The phone chimed in its ugly way, putting its faulty bell to work. Iris stood and desperately made for the receiver before the folder's gravitational pull ensnared her.

"Hello?"

"Hiya, Iris?" came a scratching voice that bled into the telephone static.

"Hi Tony. I don't have any outstood fees."

The Spacehopper's sigh crackled like a dying hearth. "No, it's not about your outstanding fees, or the books you refuse to give back—"

"What books?"

"…starting t' forget myself. Look, you wanna take this call or not?"

"You've got a call?" Iris asked, extending a purple tendril from underneath her jacket sleeve and dragging a dining chair closer.

"It's from Alis. He's asking for ya."

A little over a day had passed. At this rate, he was worthy of giving the GFP a run for its money.

"Do you want me to connect you two?" Tony asked.

"Don't. Don't do that," she stammered, the sanctity of their home telephone engrained into her instincts. "Do you have two Pattern Readers?"

"Ah," Tony muttered, understanding. "Won't be a moment."

"Thank you…Tony?"

"Hm?"

It was a question she'd raised once, to the party that she thought she'd most identify with. It was a thought that only came to her in the moment: the other half of the equation.

"What happens to the library when Al becomes king?"

The line faded, enough for the soft song of wind chimes to take over. Iris waited longer than she did with Al, somebody who'd clearly made peace with whatever was coming.

"It'll continue," Tony said. "That's for damn sure."

"I see."

"Yeah…line's ready. Holler if you need anything else."

"Thank you."

Tony bowed out, and a gentle whir took over.

"Alis?"

"Iris? You're there?"

"Through a Pattern Reader. You can speak."

"All right. Sorry for the abruptness, but I got a read back on the coded message. My buddy recognised it almost immediately."

"That easily?" Iris asked.

"It's hard to miss. Code's Treyatasian; first code to originate from a Spirit nation. It's still novel, and it's been doing the rounds at Vesmosian intelligence for the past month now, apparently."

And the demon reared its ugly head more. Six out of seven, or was it seven out of eight?

"They already cracked it?"

"'Cracked' is a stretch," Alis said. "Rumour is, Treyatas is getting desperate; they're cutting deals left and right, even with Vesmos. One of them must have clued the intelligence over here in on how it works."

"Then what's the point of the code?"

"You would have to ask the Treyatasians. For all we know, they may have created a new one already, but that isn't our concern."

He began rummaging through his clothes, the scratchy shuffling irritating her ears.

"The message Crestana read out, I had my friend translate it for me—ULEF mole. It's a date and a place, nothing else. Tell me if this means anything to you...September fourteenth, Druim Street."

Iris racked her brain.

"No, nothing."

"All right, well. I'll get this to the shop and convince the manager to trust my friend."

September fourteenth, Druim Street. She drew a blank on the location, but the date was only two spots on the calendar removed from the present, and thankfully to the right.

"Thank you," she said. "I'll tell Evalyn."

"Anytime."

More shuffling. He was about to hang up.

"Before you go," Iris said, barely hanging onto his coattails.

"Hm? I'm almost out of coins."

"Sorry...when will you come home next?"

Silence. Not even the jittery ruffling.

"Alis?"

"Sorry. 'Home' caught me off guard."

"I didn't realise."

"No, no. I forget I wear antlers now...anyway. I don't know. Unlikely to be soon, depending on how this goes down."

"Oh. I see."

"Everything okay, Iris?"

A soft draught played with her hair, delaying the malaise coming from her room for a precious second. She pursed her lips, somehow finding it harder to speak to Alis now than about the code.

Iris heard him slip another coin into the telephone, and panic rose in her throat.

"I'm hiding something from Mum. Dad told me to, but I'm scared if she finds it…"

"If she finds it?"

"I don't know. She'll get worse."

Worse how was her biggest worry. In what direction—inwards or outwards? The coin could flip both ways, but Iris feared the former more. Shouting was still communication.

"If you mean in the way she's been acting as of late, then…well, I'm not the person to ask about parent-child relationships."

"Mmm."

"She wants to protect you, of course, and well…a sense of powerlessness is something I understand. It feels…jittery. You've all this…energy—anger or passion—but there's four walls tight around you. So you jitter on the spot until you lose your strength."

"Then what?"

"…I don't know. I don't know, but I've found myself a little shovel, and for the last three years I've chipped away, even though I know that'll never bring them down. I'm sure your mother could blow through hers, but the people she'd hurt in the process…sorry. It's not much of an answer."

"I know, but I think you're right."

"I believe she'll figure this out. But really, this is my last coin. I'll have to leave you here."

"All right. Thank you."

"Talk soon."

Alis's voice traded places with Tony's.

"All done?"

"Yes."

"All right. See you soon."

The line cut, and Iris hung up the receiver. She didn't let go, paralysed in a semi-lucid state as what-if scenarios ran through her head.

She'd finish reading the file soon, and given she had the courage to, consider burning it.