1
For the week leading up to his death, Cardenia Wu-Patrick stayed mostly at the bedside of her father, Batrin, who, when he was informed that his condition had reached the limits of medical competence and that palliative care was all that was left to him, decided to die at home, in his favorite bed. Cardenia, who had been aware for some time that the end was close, had cleared her schedule until further notice and had a comfortable chair installed near her father’s bed.
“Don’t you have better things to do than to sit around here?” Batrin joked to his daughter and sole surviving child, as she sat to begin her morning session with her father.
“Not at the moment,” she said.
“I doubt that. I’m pretty sure every time you leave this room to go to the bathroom, you’re accosted by minions who need your signature on something.”
“No,” Cardenia said. “Everything right now is in the hands of the executive committee. Everything is in maintenance mode for the foreseeable future.”
“Until I die,” Batrin said.
“Until you die.”
Batrin laughed at that, weakly, as that is how he did everything at this point. “This is, I’m afraid, all too foreseeable.”
“Try not to think about it,” Cardenia said.
“Easy for you to say.” They both lapsed into a quiet, companionable silence for a few moments, until Batrin grimaced silently at a noise and turned to his daughter. “What is that?”
Cardenia cocked her head slightly. “You mean the singing?”
“There’s singing going on?”
“You have a crowd of well-wishers outside,” Cardenia said.
Batrin smiled at that. “You’re sure that’s what they are?”
Batrin Wu, Cardenia’s father, was formally Attavio VI, Emperox of the Holy Empire of the Interdependent States and Mercantile Guilds, King of Hub and Associated Nations, Head of the Interdependent Church, Successor to Earth and Father of All, Eighty-seventh Emperox of the House of Wu, which claimed its lineage to the Prophet-Emperox Rachela I, founder of the Interdependency and Savior of Humanity.
“We’re sure,” Cardenia said. The two of them were at Brighton, the imperial residence at Hubfall, the capital of Hub and her father’s favorite residence. The formal imperial seat lay several thousand klicks up the gravity well, at Xi’an, the sprawling space station that hovered over the surface of Hub, visible to Hubfall like a giant reflective plate flung out into the darkness—or would be, if most of Hubfall were anywhere near the planet surface. Hubfall, like all the cities of Hub, was first blasted, then carved, into the rock of the planet, with only occasional service domes and structures peppering the surface. Those domes looked out on an eternal twilight, waiting for a sunrise the tidally locked planet would never offer, and which, if it did, would bake Hub’s citizens, screaming, like potatoes in a broiler.
Attavio VI hated Xi’an and never stayed there longer than absolutely necessary. He certainly had no intention of dying there. Brighton was his home, and outside it, a thousand or more well-wishers pooled near its gate, cheering for him and occasionally breaking out into the imperial anthem or “What Say You,” the cheering song for the imperial football team. All of the well-wishers, Cardenia knew, had been thoroughly vetted before they were allowed within a klick of Brighton’s gate and within earshot of the emperox. Some of them didn’t even have to be paid to show up.
“How many did we have to pay?” Batrin asked.
“Hardly any,” Cardenia said.
“I had to pay all three thousand people who showed up to cheer my mother on her deathbed. I had to pay them a lot.”
“You’re more popular than your mother was.” Cardenia had never met her grandmother, Emperox Zetian III, but the tales from history were toe-curling.
“A rock would be more popular than my mother,” Batrin said. “But you shouldn’t fool yourself, my child. No emperox of the Interdependency has ever been that popular. It’s not in the job description.”
“You were more popular than most, at least,” Cardenia suggested.
“That’s why you only had to pay some of the people outside the window.”
“I could have them dismissed, if you like.”
“They’re fine. See if they take requests.”
Presently Batrin napped again and when Cardenia was sure he was asleep, she got up from her chair and exited into her father’s private office, which she had commandeered from him for the duration and which would be hers soon enough in any event. As she exited her father’s bedroom she saw a squadron of medical professionals, headed by Qui Drinin, imperial physician, descend upon her father to clean him, check his vitals, and make sure he was as comfortable as someone who was dealing with a painful and incurable disease from which he would never recover could be.
In the private office was Naffa Dolg, Cardenia’s recently appointed chief of staff. Naffa waited until Cardenia had reached into the office’s small refrigerator, acquired a soft drink, sat down, opened the drink, had two swallows from the container, then set the drink down on her father’s desk.
“Coaster,” Naffa said to her boss.
“Really?” Cardenia said back.
Naffa pointed. “That desk was originally the desk of Turinu II. It is six hundred fifty years old. It was a gift to him by the father of Genevieve N’don, who would become his wife after—”
Cardenia held up a hand. “Enough.” She reached over on the desk, grabbed a small leather-bound book, pulled it over to her, and set her drink on it. Then she caught Naffa’s expression. “What now?”
“Oh, nothing,” Naffa said. “Just that your ‘coaster’ is a first edition of Chao’s Commentaries on the Racheline Doctrines, which means it’s nearly a thousand years old and unspeakably priceless and even thinking of setting a drink can on it is probably blasphemy of the highest order.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Cardenia took another swig of her drink and then set it on the carpet next to the desk. “Happy? I mean, unless the carpet is also unspeakably priceless.”
“Actually—”
“Can we stipulate that everything in this room except the two of us is probably hundreds of years old, originally gifted to one of my ancestors by another immensely famous historical personage, and that it is priceless or at least worth more than most humans will make in their lifetimes? Is there anything in this room that does not fit that description?”
Naffa pointed to the refrigerator. “I think that’s just a refrigerator.”
Cardenia finally found a coaster on the desk, picked her drink up off the carpet, and set it on it. “This coaster is probably four hundred years old and the gift of the Duke of End,” she said, then looked at her assistant. “Don’t tell me if it is.”
“I won’t.” Naffa pulled out her tablet.
“But you know, don’t you.”
“You have requests from the executive committee,” Naffa said, ignoring her boss’s last comment.
Cardenia threw up her hands. “Of course I do.” The executive committee consisted of three guild representatives, three ministers of parliament, and three archbishops of the church. In other times, the committee was the emperox’s direct link to the three centers of power in the Interdependency. At the moment they were charged with maintaining the continuity of government during these final days of the emperox’s reign. They were driving Cardenia a little batty.
“First, they want you to make an appearance on the networks to, as they put it, ‘calm the fears of the empire’ regarding your father’s situation.”
“He’s dying, and quickly,” Cardenia said. “I’m not sure that’s calming.”
“I think they’d prefer something a little more inspiring. They sent over a speech.”
“There’s no point reassuring the empire. By the time my speech reaches End he’ll have been dead for nine standard months. Even Bremen is two weeks away.”
“There’s still Hub and Xi’an and associated nations in-system. The furthest of those is only five light-hours out.”