“They already know he’s dying.”
“It’s not about him dying. It’s about continuity.”
“The Wu dynasty stretches back a thousand years, Naffa. No one is really that worried about continuity.”
“That’s not the continuity they’re worried about. They’re worried about their day-to-day lives. No matter who would become emperox, things change. There are three hundred million imperial subjects in-system, Cardenia. You’re the heir. They know the dynasty won’t change. It’s everything else.”
“I can’t believe you’re on the side of the executive committee here.”
“Stopped clock. Twice a day.”
“Have you read the speech?”
“I have. It’s awful.”
“Are you rewriting it?”
“Already rewritten, yes.”
“What else?”
“They wanted to know if you’ve changed your position on Amit Nohamapetan.”
“My position on what? Meeting with him or marrying him?”
“I would think they’re hoping the first will lead to the second.”
“I’ve met him once before. It’s why I don’t want to meet with him again. I’m definitely not going to marry him.”
“The executive committee, perhaps anticipating your reluctance, wishes to remind you that your brother, the late crown prince, had agreed in principle to marry Nadashe Nohamapetan.”
“I would rather marry her than her brother.”
“Anticipating that you might say that, the executive committee wishes to remind you that option would also probably be acceptable to all parties.”
“I’m not going to marry her either,” Cardenia said. “I don’t like either. They’re terrible people.”
“They’re terrible people whose house is ascendant in the mercantile guilds and whose desire for an alliance with the House of Wu would allow the empire a lever with the guilds it hasn’t had in centuries.”
“Is that you talking or the executive committee?”
“Eighty percent executive committee.”
“You’re at twenty percent on this?” Cardenia offered mostly feigned shock.
“That twenty percent recognizes that political marriages are a thing that happens to people, like you, who are on the verge of becoming emperox and who, despite having a millennium-long dynasty to fall back on for credibility, still need allies to keep the guilds in line.”
“This is where you tell me of all the times in the last thousand years the Wu emperoxs were basically puppets for guild interests, isn’t it?”
“This is where I remind you that you gave me this position not just out of personal friendship and experience with court politics but because I have a doctorate in the history of the Wu dynasty and know more about your family than you do,” Naffa said. “But sure, I could do that other thing, too.”
Cardenia sighed. “We’re in no danger of becoming guild puppets, though.”
Naffa peered over at her boss, silently.
“You’re kidding,” Cardenia said.
“The House of Wu is its own mercantile family and it has the monopoly on ship building and military weaponry,” Naffa said. “Likewise, control of the military runs through the emperox, not the guilds. So, no, it would be difficult for the guilds or any of the houses who control them to make short-term inroads into control of the house or of the empire. That said, your father has been very lax in controlling the mercantile houses and has allowed several of them, including the Nohamapetans, to build power centers that are unprecedented in the last two hundred years. This is, of course, leaving out the church entirely, which is its own power center. And you can expect to see all of these try to grab more power for themselves because you are expected to be a weak emperox.”
“Thanks,” Cardenia said, dryly.
“It’s not personal. Your ascendance to the crown was unexpected.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No one knows what to think of you.”
“Except the executive committee, who wants to marry me off.”
“They want to preserve an existing potential alliance.”
“An alliance with terrible people.”
“Really nice people don’t usually accrue power.”
“You’re saying I’m kind of an outlier,” Cardenia said.
“I don’t recall saying you were nice,” Naffa replied.
*
“None of this was supposed to be your problem,” Batrin said to Cardenia, later. She was back in his bedroom, sitting in the chair. The medical staff that had worried on him while he was asleep had retreated to nearby rooms. It was just the two of them again, plus an array of medical equipment.
“I know,” Cardenia said. They’d had this conversation before, but she knew they were about to have it again.
“It was your brother who was groomed for all of this,” Batrin continued, and Cardenia nodded as he droned on slowly. Her brother, Rennered Wu, was actually her half brother. He was the son of the imperial consort Glenna Costu, while Cardenia was the result of a brief liaison between the emperox and Cardenia’s mother, Hannah, a professor of ancient languages. Hannah Patrick met the emperox while giving him a tour of the rare books collection of the Spode Library at the University of Hubfall. The two corresponded on academics after that and then, a few years after the sudden death of the imperial consort, the emperox gifted Hannah Patrick first with a rare edition of the Qa?īdat-ul-Burda, and subsequently, not too long thereafter, and a bit to the surprise of both, with Cardenia.
Rennered was already the heir and Hannah Patrick, upon reflection, decided that she would rather step out of an airlock than become a permanent fixture of the imperial court. As a result, Cardenia’s childhood was pampered but far removed from the trappings of actual power. Cardenia was acknowledged as a child of the emperox and saw her famous father regularly but infrequently. She would occasionally be teased by classmates, who might call her “princess,” but not too often or too viciously, because as it turns out she was a princess and her imperial security detail was sensitive to slights.
Her childhood and early adult years were as normal as they could be when one is the daughter of the most powerful human in the known universe, which was to say not very but close enough that Cardenia could see normal, distantly, from there. She attended the University of Hubfall, received degrees in modern literature and education, and upon graduation gave serious thought to becoming a professional patron of some arts-related programs and initiatives for the underadvantaged.
Then Rennered had to go get himself killed while racing, slamming himself and his charmingly retro automobile into a wall during a charity exhibition race with actual race car drivers and basically decapitating himself in the process. Cardenia never watched the video of the crash—that was her brother, why would she—but she read the forensics report afterward, which while clearing the event of any suspicion of foul play, noted the safety features of the automobile and the unlikelihood of the accident being fatal, much less one that ended in decapitation.
Cardenia later learned that at the charity auction after the race Rennered was supposed to have publicly announced his engagement to Nadashe Nohamapetan. The confluence of those two events stayed firmly connected in her mind afterward.
Cardenia had never been very close to Rennered—Rennered was a teenager when she was born and their circles never meshed—but he had treated her kindly. As a child she idolized him and his playboy ways from afar, and as she grew older and saw how much of the crush of imperial fame had passed by her to land on his shoulders, was quietly relieved he was there to shoulder it. He seemed to enjoy it more than she ever would.
He was gone and then suddenly the empire needed another heir for emperox.
“I think I lost you there,” Batrin said.
“I’m sorry,” Cardenia said. “I was thinking of Rennered. I wish he were still here.”
“So do I. Although perhaps for different reasons.”
“I would be happier if he were succeeding you. A lot of people would be.”
“That’s certain, my child. But Cardenia, listen to me. I don’t regret that you are succeeding me.”