17 - Jack

JACK

Prince Benedict put on a swinging party in an aircraft hangar in Archcove to celebrate the arrest of the Rekindler conspirators. With the way he was shoring up support among the political class, I think he would have thrown a party regardless, but the defeat of treason made a good excuse. I was given an invitation, which I like to think was because of my small role passing along Murdoch’s message. Whatever the reason, I was glad to be there.

They had turned that big metal building into a dance floor with all the planes moved out and confetti set up to pour down from the ceiling. There was a brass band, and everyone looked young and beautiful and full of life.

I would have been trying to go after some of the girls, although most of them had come with their boyfriends or husbands, except that I was still so hung up on the woman in red from Bistro Moderne. I'd even inquired about her at Cabinet Hall, but no one seemed to know anything.

I lingered among the packed crowd, which seemed about a third military men, and held a champagne flute. Prince Benedict stood on a proper stage, speaking into a microphone that connected his voice to an amplifier. "We will not send our boys to die in the snow," he shouted. Before my eyes in the past few weeks, I’d seen him become a better public speaker, more animated and more boisterous. I wondered if he had some kind of coach. "We will not let rogue generals drag our nation around by the nose. We will leave the Clementics to freeze to death praying to the moon in their northern wastes, and we will focus our might where it belongs, securing peace and prosperity in the Sunberth."

This last part could have meant a lot of different things. After all, there was no active war in the Sunberth region to speak of. There was, however, a lot of Western meddling, and I knew for a fact that the Prince's pet cause was extending our influence to the Midlands just west and the islands just to our south.

Much of the political status quo had been established at a time when we had no navy. Now we had a grand one, and there was no reason to let those far-off powers carve up our own backyard. At least, that's the way he saw it.

There were cheers at his speech, and the Prince went on. "You deserve a Calendula Court that understands the armed forces, that respects the armed forces, and this is why I am honored to announce that I will be taking the role of Chief of Army for the Luminous Paxanan Army Corps."

This was a strange announcement, but the timing seemed good. Ravenridge had been a contender to become the new chief of army, and now he was rotting in prison. I had no idea whether the ascension of the prince to the role would be a boon or a disaster. He was not an officer and had no military experience of any kind.

The crowd seemed to like it, and there was more applause. Then the confetti dropped all over us, red and green and blue and yellow and white. The band began to play, and I saw balloons rising toward the ceiling.

I chuckled with some incredulity at the enthusiasm. It seemed like the people in the room weren’t really listening to the prince at all. They were just happy and possibly drunk, and I got the sense they would have cheered for almost anything.

As I stood there, feeling apart from the crowd, a hand touched my back. I turned and saw my dear friend, Murdoch Boll. He was cleaned up, though he still had the beard. He wore an olive dress uniform with a gleaming new medal on his breast.

I shook hands with him and gripped his forearm firm. “Damn if it isn’t good to see you,” I said. He was one of the smartest men, I knew and the most reasonable.

“You look taller,” said Murdoch.

I wondered if he might be seeing the effect of the new half-inch in my dress shoes. “I wish,” I said, shrugging.

“You’re just coming into your own,” Murdoch clarified.

I was grateful for the compliment. I’d always felt a little spindly, whereas he had been a bulldog of muscle and power. Coming into my own, especially in Murdoch’s eyes, was a welcome change. I pointed to the flower hanging from a ribbon on his chest. “Order of the Calendula. What does that get you?”

“Nothing,” said Murdoch. “Something to put on the shelf.”

I shook my head. It was funny how little he knew about politics, for all his worldliness. “It makes you a shoo-in for office,” I explained.

“Maybe in another world,” said Murdoch, for reasons I couldn’t understand. He seemed so committed to the Army Corps, and yet so unable to imagine applying those skills to anything outside it.

“I heard a rumor they wanted to promote you to major,” I said. “It’s just that they can’t have a major that far under thirty years old. A few more years, you’ll be brass for sure. It’s incredible what you did.”

“I appreciate it, Jack,” said Murdoch. Like me, he seemed a little more sullen than the revelers all around us. “I have you to thank.”

As much as it might have been in my interest to puff up my part, I had to be truthful. “In all candor,” I said, “I don’t know if I made a difference. I mean, I was working on it with Tom, but the SPs were already after Ravenridge by then.”

“From what I hear, you saved General Dell,” said Murdoch.

“An honor guardsman saved Dell.”

My Wylder friend looked around.

“Is Tom here?”

“No, he’s—”

To my astonishment, Prince Benedict himself interrupted us. I had never been so close to the man before. He had finished his speech and come down from the podium, and was now glad-handing his way through the airplane hangar.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I bowed deeply, as did Murdoch. The prince bowed back to the Wylder captain. “Captain Boll,” he said, with his slightly odd voice. I could hear the ancient speech patterns of the Royal Court in the way he talked. “Thank you for protecting our nation and my father from the Rekindler treason. From what I hear, Ravenridge and his men are soon for the firing squad. Good riddance.”

I could tell Murdoch was uncomfortable addressing the man eye to eye, but this was what Benedict wanted. He had been on a huge campaign to cut down all the old royal formalities. He extended a hand, and after a pause, Murdoch accepted it. After the shake, Murdoch bowed again. “Thank you, Your Highness,” he said.

“I’m dispensing with court protocol entirely in my stay as Army Chief,” said Benedict, “‘Prince Benedict’ or ‘sir’ is fine.”

I almost laughed, watching how uncomfortable this made my friend. Despite being a descendant of Wylder rebels, he was now an ardent traditionalist. “That will take some getting used to,” he admitted.

At once, I heard a panicked shout in a language that was not Paxanan. I looked over at the young man with Western features as he burst in from the moonlit tarmac outside.

“Gesando! Chumi skjoto!” he said. I recognized the tongue as Almenreicher.

Then, from somewhere else in the room, I saw the Almenreicher ambassador to Paxana approach his courier with concern. “Waz ist iz?” he asked.

“Der feldmarascal habet girât daz wîgand,” said the courier, in an absolute state of agitation. Whatever he’d relayed, it had alarmed the ambassador, and the two foreign men left together just a moment later.

“What did he say?” I asked aloud, in case anyone could decipher it. A suited man beside me who apparently knew Almenreicher leaned in. “Civil war in the Almenreich.”

I furrowed my brow. The suited man moved on. The party seemed to continue unimpeded, and the prince walked off to continue his introductions. Murdoch, however, stayed with me. “This changes things politically,” I said to my friend.

I knew that the Almenreich was something of the black sheep of the Western powers, far more friendly with us than any of the others. If there was a civil war there, it was likely that the insurgent faction would appeal to the rest of the West for support. If the upstarts won, it would almost certainly drag the Almenreich into the West’s sphere of influence, out of ours.

Of course, I wasn’t sure about any of this, not enough to explain it to Murdoch. “How?” he asked, and I shook my head.

“I don’t know exactly. I’m not that good yet,” I told him.

“The Almenreich’s six thousand miles away,” said Murdoch.

This was a point I was comfortable contesting. “No they’re not. They’re right on our border. The whole northeast coast of the Midlands is an Almenreich treaty port zone. That means, effectively, they’re on our border, right on the southern border of our North Midland Protectorate in East Norsombre.”

All of this would have been indecipherable to me just weeks prior, but working Cabinet Hall had been giving me a crash course on our various luminous holdings. We held parts of the North Midlands, and so did the Almenreich. That meant our interests were all tied up together.

“Do you need to get back to Cabinet?” Murdoch asked, seeing a worry on my face.

I shook my head in the negative and drank my champagne. “This is the Foreign Secretary’s headache for now, and if I walked in his door I’m pretty sure he’d punt me so far over the Sunrim I’d land in Kaichura.”

Murdoch seemed a little overwhelmed by the noise of the band and the party. He made a motion to exit the hangar, and I followed. In the cool of the night, we walked past three A3 Honeybee biplane fighters in a line on the tarmac. These were the ones that had been moved from the hangar that morning.

“When I met you, Jack Clearwater,” said Murdoch, “all you wanted to talk about was girls and martial arts serials. Now here you are talking international relations.”

I smiled. He was in a reminiscent mood. I could work with that, and I was happy to leave politics aside. “All right, I’ll tell you about a girl,” I said. “Came up behind me at a high-class bar. Pale skin, red lip, red suit and skirt. I mean, like a Far West movie star. If I could stick my head up that skirt till I die, I’d be a happy man.”

I couldn’t really talk that way with most of my Cabinet buddies, but Murdoch took it in stride. “What’s her name?” he asked, always the romantic.

This was the sticking point. “I forgot to get it.”

Murdoch laughed at me. “Sounds like you really did have other priorities.”

We stood close together, both of us with our hands in our pockets to ward off the cold. I loved how easy it was to be in his presence. “Nothing happened,” I said. “It was a minute at most, and she was gone. She bought me a beer.”

“She bought you a beer?”

“That’s what happens when you’re a dashing young man, Murdoch.”

Murdoch seemed like he was holding something back. “No, I, I’m aware.”

Again, we were interrupted. This time it was the dress shoe clack of Nelson Sailpost as he jogged toward me holding a briefcase.

I had not spoken to Nelson since my disaster offending his boss, Boyd Flinter. That said, we were not enemies. “Nelson, what do you need?” I asked him.

Sailpost looked like he was in a dreadful hurry. “I’m catching the cable car back to Cabinet. Flinter’s going to want me in to figure out what the hell’s going on with our imports from the Almenreich. Oh, see you at Staff Brief tomorrow.”

I was confused. It was only the level above me who attended the daily Staff Brief. “Is Edmund out sick?” I asked. There had been one time I had attended in silence to take notes for Edmund Depper, when he’d been away.

When I asked the question, Nelson stopped. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he considered what to say. “Edmund is out, period. You’re surprised?”

I made a confused face. “Yes?” I really couldn’t believe the news. He’d been in such good standing just that afternoon.

To help clarify, Nelson Sailpost opened his briefcase and handed me a newspaper. “Then you need a Gazette subscription,” he said.

I looked at a headline he was pointing to. ‘CABINET STAFFERS FREQUENT MAN-LOVERS’ BATH HOUSE.’ There, right below, was a photo of Edmund Depper in a steamy sauna, kissing a young man.

“Whoa,” I said.

Sailpost nodded. “Be glad you’re not in FS office tonight. Flinter’s on a tear over motor imports.”

“I’m glad every night,” I said. I knew there was no way in hell I could have ever worked for a man as fiery as Boyd Flinter. I would have quit long ago. “Be seeing you, Sailpost.”

“Keep the Gazette,” he said, leaving it in my hands. “I guess I should say congratulations.”

Sailpost re-clasped his briefcase and jogged off to catch his cable car. Murdoch, with an odd expression, pointed at the newspaper in my hands. “What does that mean?” he asked.

I thought it through. With Depper gone, the chain of events seemed clear.

“It means I’m assistant to the master secretary.”