“His boss died.”
“Yes, but he also assumes he lost his job. Normally by this time the new emperox’s set of cronies are busy installing themselves into positions of power. His is a position of power, nominally.”
“I don’t have any cronies,” Cardenia said. “I mean, besides you.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have volunteers.”
“What do I have next?”
“You’re meeting with the executive committee in half an hour.”
Cardenia frowned at this. “We can’t get to Xi’an that quickly.” The executive committee, as with nearly all of the imperial apparatus of state, did its work in the immense space station above Hub.
Naffa arched her eyebrow at this. “You don’t have to go anywhere,” she said. “You are emperox now. They come to you. Dr. Drinin informed them several hours ago that your father was fading. The committee had hoped to be present to comfort you when he passed. Those are their words, by the way.”
Cardenia thought of the nine members of the executive committee hovering over her father’s deathbed, robbing the two of them of their final, as-intimate-as-possible-under-the-circumstances moments together and suppressed an itchy feeling. “I’ll have to remember to thank them.”
Naffa’s eyebrow arched again but she said nothing. “They’re in the formal ballroom at the moment. That’s on the other side of the building.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course. What would you like to do now?”
“I think I want to pee.”
Naffa nodded and walked Cardenia to her suite of rooms. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” she said to her boss.
“What will you do with your free time?”
“Same thing as you, in a slightly less luxurious commode.” Cardenia smiled at this, and Naffa walked off.
Inside her rooms, part of Cardenia’s brain noted everything she was doing as a first. This is the first time in this room as emperox, it said. This is the first time picking up a tablet as emperox. This is the first time in this bathroom as emperox. This is the first time I’ve unzipped my pants as emperox. First time sitting on the toilet as emperox. Aaaaaaand now this is my first pee as emperox.
So many firsts.
“Tell me about Emperox Grayland,” Cardenia said, to her tablet, as she sat on the toilet.
“Emperox Grayland reigned from 220 to 223 FI,” her tablet said, in a pleasant voice, popping up a search page. The Interdependency started its calendar from the founding of the empire by Prophet-Emperox Rachela I, which was arrogant—there had already been a perfectly good calendar system in use, in which the founding of the Interdependency took place in the late twenty-sixth century—but Cardenia suspected it was no less arrogant than what any empire did, given the chance. “Notable events in her reign include the founding of Lamphun, the disappearance of Dalasysla, and the emperox’s assassination by Gunnar Olafsen in 223.”
“Why was she assassinated?”
“At his trial, Gunnar Olafsen maintained the emperox did not do enough to rescue the citizens of Dalasysla.”
“Was this true?”
“I am a search function. I do not have opinions on political matters.”
Cardenia crossed her eyes in irritation. Fair point, faceless computer, she thought. “How was Dalasysla lost?”
“The Flow stream access to it disappeared in 222,” the tablet said.
Oh, right, Cardenia thought. Her elementary school Interdependency history lessons came back to her now. Dalasysla was one of several early settlements that had met with a bad end before the Wu emperoxs and the religious and social tenets of Interdependence had entirely locked down most opposition. Most of those settlements, however, had been lost to war or famine or disease. Dalasysla was lost because suddenly there was no way to get to it, or from it, through the Flow. It had just … disappeared, off the map entirely.
Cardenia called up an encyclopedia article on the assassination, complete with a photo of Olafsen, a ship engineer from Dalasysla, who had been stationed on the Toun Sandin, the imperial tenner. He had assassinated the Emperox Grayland, along with more than a hundred of her retinue, by sealing off the ring segment her staterooms were in, and, while the Toun Sandin was in the Flow, returning from a state visit from Jendouba, jettisoning the ring segment out of the time-space bubble surrounding the ship, into the Flow itself, where it promptly stopped existing.
“Well, this is cheerful,” Cardenia said to herself. She was not entirely sure why her father had suggested the name Grayland to her, unless he was confident she would be assassinated by a disgruntled minion. This discomfited her somewhat. She skimmed through the rest of the entry and noted that Grayland had apparently actually ordered the evacuation of Dalasysla, based on data provided to her by scientists, but that the evacuation had been opposed in parliament, including by Dalasysla’s own ministers, and by the guilds, which delayed an evacuation until it was too late. Olafsen blamed the emperox for the delay, when the blame should have properly set elsewhere.
But there is only one emperox, Cardenia thought. And she was on his ship.
“Hey,” Naffa said, from the other room. “Are you about done?”
“Almost,” Cardenia said. She finished her business, washed up, and walked out of her bathroom, to see Naffa holding up a very serious uniform, tailored to Cardenia’s measurements.
“What is that?” Cardenia asked.
“You’re about to meet the nine most powerful humans in the universe, not counting yourself,” Naffa said. “You might want to dress up a bit.”
*
The Very Serious Uniform chafed, but not nearly as much as the executive committee.
As Cardenia entered the cavernous ballroom, the nine members of the committee approached her and bowed deeply. “Your Majesty,” said Gunda Korbijn, archbishop of Xi’an and nominal head of the executive committee, from the depth of the bow. “Our deepest sorrow and sympathy this day, on the passing of your father, the emperox. He will undoubtedly be seated with the Prophet in the Beyond.”
Cardenia, who knew of the emperox’s utter lack of religiosity, despite being the official head of the Church of the Interdependency, suppressed the smallest of wry smiles. “Thank you, Your Eminence.”
“I speak for the entire council when I say to you that we pledge our unending allegiance to you, the Imperial House of Wu, and the Interdependency.”
“Sure, and we thank you,” Cardenia said, using for the first time the imperial “we,” and the somewhat more formal imperial style of address she’d been coached in over the last year. That’s going to take some getting used to, she thought. She glanced over at Naffa, who offered no arched brow at the switch. She would no doubt offer it later.
The committee remained in a deep bow, which confused Cardenia until she realized they were waiting on her to release them. “Please,” she said, only a little flustered, motioning for them to rise. They rose. Cardenia motioned to the long table that had been set in the center of the ballroom. “Let us sit and proceed with business.”
The committee sat, senior-most closest to the emperox’s chair at the head of the table, with the exception of Archbishop Korbijn, who sat opposite of Cardenia. Cardenia noted the dress of each—the church bishops in fine red robes lined in purple, the guild representatives in their formal black and gold, the parliamentarians in somber blue business suits. Her own Very Serious Uniform was imperial green, dark with emerald piping.
We look like a box of crayons, Cardenia thought.
“You’re smiling, Your Majesty,” Archbishop Korbijn said, as she sat.
“We were remembering our father, who often spoke of meeting with this committee.”
“He spoke well of us, I hope.”
No, not really. “Yes, of course.”
“Your Majesty, the next few days are critical. You must set forth a period of mourning—”