Date: 7-4-165

  As it happens, Nadine needed no encouragement to make prompt work of our move to the palace. I overslept the day after our celebratory dinner—the blackberry wine had an alluring sweetness to it and I may have indulged more than was strictly wise—and by the time I finally roused myself from my room, there was a stack of empty crates already waiting for me in the hallway.

  “Would you like some help?” Nadine called, poking her head in from a room down the way.

  “I am fine,” I called back. What few personal belongings I had could fit into just two crates with room to spare, and indeed, I was able to pack away my entire life in short order.

  That day and the next were given over to packing. The following day saw the removal of the Seabornes’ furniture (which was apparently all rented) and a short, tense meeting with the estate’s owner (also rented, to my surprise).

  And then, today, we loaded everything onto three carriages and made the trip up to the palace.

  ***

  “The completed volumes of Combeaux, Maier, and Horncrow will go on their own shelf above trauma response, and do be sure to set aside a prominent space to display my original Zerrich…”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now, if we can, I’d like to use this corner as a little reading nook. Can we have a reading light set up here, like so?”

  “I’m sure it can be arranged, ma’am.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but the kitchen sent me to ask if you have any requests for breakfast?”

  “Oh, yes, right— Do you have [???]? Yes? We haven’t had good eggs [???] in ages, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  Nadine is a skilled physician, but I wonder if her true calling isn’t being waited upon hand and foot. She has a way of flitting from task to task, arresting the attention of this servant or that one, and shamelessly setting them to her bidding. A clearer image of this woman appears in my mind, and I see now that the only thing that was missing from her life is this: unfettered access to unimaginable wealth.

  Our new quarters—which I am affectionately calling the Seaborne Suite—is a collection of rooms clustered about a large communal space. I’ve been given the room nearest the bath, while Nadine has chosen three rooms near the suite’s main entrance for her master bedroom, office, and library. The communal space consists of a sitting area with lush sofas at one end and a long dining table at the other.

  My understanding is that all of the palace’s senior staff—advisers, officials, and their ilk—have suites such as this, one to a family. Lower-ranking servants have more communal living arrangements. I can only guess as to what the Valia quarters are like.

  “It’s a bit cramped though, innit?” Olrick mused as Nadine supervised the installation of furniture.

  “Our old place was too large for us— Ah, let’s try that on the other wall, there— I think we’ll be much more comfortable here.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” He wrung his hands together as he cast his gaze about the room listlessly. “Gonna miss having a garden, though. Don’t even have any windows in here.”

  “There are plenty of outdoor spaces on the grounds. You’ll just have to walk a little, that’s all— Careful with that!”

  One of the servants, a short man with a hunched back, approached Olrick. “We could arrange for an image of the outdoors to be projected along one of the walls, if you’d like, sir.”

  “Huh?” It took Olrick a moment to realize the servant had been speaking to him. “Ah, no, that’s fine. Can’t open a projection to let in the breeze, can you?”

  “Right you are, sir.” With a groveling bow, the servant zipped off to help his fellows.

  I closed my eyes and sank into the sofa upon which I sat, ceasing my language spell. Partially, this was to grant Nadine and Olrick a modicum of privacy as they squabbled, and partially it was to see how much I could understand without it; two goals that run contrary to each other, I realize, but I am nothing if not self-contradictory.

  It’s frustrating, returning to this uncomprehending state after achieving near fluency in their language. Even in the early days, when I thought I could simply construct a one-to-one glossary between Guntao language and Panzean, my basic language spell was better than this. Without words to give them meaning, Olrick sounded like a dreadfully ashamed bear, and Nadine was like a bird with a bad cough.

  Still, by paying careful attention to their inflection, I imagined I could follow the general thrust of their conversation. Olrick would find something about our new quarters that displeased him, and he would voice his concern in a timid voice that bordered on being a complaint. Nadine would brush his complaint aside with some detached bit of logic that didn’t address the root of his discontent. Olrick would then begin the search for a new problem.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  I didn’t actually understand a word of it, though. Perhaps in the end they were simply talking about the weather. They pattered on for a while longer, and in spite of my efforts to concentrate on their words, I soon dozed off.

  ***

  I’ve never been particularly predisposed towards dreams. Mine have always been fairly dull affairs, and rarely have they stuck with me for long after waking. Something about this one clung to me for the rest of the day, however. Perhaps because it was a dream of you.

  In the dream, we had rented a house in Valia’s Watch together, except it was your family home. We were in one of the sitting rooms—the one where I first officially met your parents, I think. You were sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, dressed in a shimmering Panzean-style overcoat and trousers, and you had a metal circlet on your head. (I understand that such circlets are a mark of royalty in Panzea, though Lord Governor Valia does not wear one.)

  “I’m so glad we came here,” you said, and I felt this swift, overwhelming surge of joy and relief.

  Everything was just fine after all. You were alive and well, and we’d come to this new world and they were so impressed with us that they made you their emperor. I think, in that moment within the dream, I was only vaguely aware that anything bad had happened to you. Certainly, this new reality my mind had concocted was more appealing than that of the waking world.

  You clapped your hands, and the doors slid open and people crowded into the room. I couldn’t make out their features, but I could somehow sense that they were all Panzeans. They crushed in around us and lifted you upon their shoulders.

  You laughed as they lifted you higher with ever-lengthening arms. “This is what we were missing. This is what we deserve!”

  The Panzeans, your servants, pressed in on me, knocking me over and trampling me as you grew more and more distant. I called out to you for help, but you were insensate, writhing in ecstasy as the servants carried you off.

  I woke then; Nadine had put a hand to my shoulder, a concerned frown on her lips. She said something about dinner—I remembered that word, “dinner,” though I’m not sure what that says about me—and I thanked her for letting me know.

  The luxury of this place is so extreme, and I don’t know how I will ever grow used to it. I’m not certain if I want to.

  ***

  Our dinner was served directly to us in the Seaborne Suite. The meal was of the highest quality, so far as I understand it, by Panzean standards—vegetables, meat, fish, a baked dessert served in sequence—but what struck me most profoundly was that two servants were spared to wait upon us for the entire mealtime.

  “Pardon me,” I asked one of them as he placed a fresh plate before me, “but do you have other duties?”

  “Mm?” He looked at me quizzically, freezing in place so that the plate of (unfortunately pungent) fish was held level with my face.

  “You both are only serving us now,” I said, gesturing to the other servant. “But there are many families and people living in the palace. You have enough free time to have two people just serve us?”

  He set the plate down uncertainly. “I’m not sure I understand, ma’am. We are here to serve you, of course.”

  “The palace has more than enough servants to help everyone, I’m sure,” Nadine said, offering her own explanation. “Most powerful mages do, and the Great Houses are home to the most powerful of all.”

  My server scrunched up his face as though he thought we were playing some strange trick on him, but then receded back to the wall to await the next course.

  For a brief moment, I was tempted to ask why Nadine and Olrick didn’t have servants back at the Seaborne Estate, but I thought better than to bring it up—their previous lack of wealth seemed to be a sore point for Nadine. Still, I was having a little trouble drawing a complete picture of Valhold’s demographics, so instead I asked: “Even the estates on the hill—they all have servants?”

  “Two or three servants to a house, usually, yeah,” Olrick said. “We were the odd ones out for not having any.” I had spent the entire afternoon listening to him dance around his feelings rather than admit that he was unhappy with the move, and now, in one blundering moment, he’d uttered the worst possible thing—and he had not yet realized what he’d stumbled into. I allowed myself a moment of silent relief for having avoided the topic myself.

  Between the officials and the servants, there must have been a small town’s worth of people living in the palace alone. Do you recall how impressed I was when I first learned that your family had a servant? I’ve heard tales that the emperor has over one thousand servants to wait on his every desire, but that always felt like a world away from reality. Of course, now I actually am in another world.

  “That wasn’t always the way of things, mind,” Olrick said, ignorant of the tight-lipped glare Nadine had fixed him with. “Back in my granddad’s day, most everything was managed with magic.”

  “Why did that situation change?” I asked.

  “After the war, folks realized we couldn’t treat the Heartless like dogs. Couldn’t leave them to fend for themselves on the streets. Gainful employment, that’s what they needed, and a chance to make a wage from an honest day’s labor.” He nodded to the servants standing against the wall, trying to affect some image of camaraderie between them. “And it was a good thing, too. Every person ought to have a job he can be proud of.”

  “As you say, sir,” one of the servants replied with a notable lack of enthusiasm.

  “I think that’s enough history for one dinner, don’t you?” Nadine cut in. “These are excellent questions for Jacque. He could teach us all a thing or two about how society has evolved.”

  I made a note to ask him about it, which reminded me of another question that was on my mind. “May I have one of the empty rooms? I think the library is too small for tutoring, and it will perhaps be a disruption if I am to do it in the common room. Then too it could become my office for my own research.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Nadine said. “Oh, I wonder who I need to talk to about arranging Jacque’s visit.”

  One of the servants cleared his throat, and they shared a glance with each other.

  “Is there some problem?” I asked, raising my voice a pitch to catch their attention.

  “No problem, ma’am,” the servant said. “It’s just that… Well, guests to the palace are strictly controlled by the [chamberlain].”

  Nobody spoke for a moment as we considered his words. It was Nadine who finally broke the silence.

  “I’m sure she’ll be happy to help us,” Nadine said. “But maybe we’d better ask Jacque to take tomorrow off, just in case.”