He supposed it was meant to be a place of reflection and peace. When he reached the top of the steps, he instead found himself sweaty and out of breath and, when he looked down and back, filled with despair. He had to get down again, didn’t he? There were a great many stairs.
Still, up here he was far from the bulkheads with their aggressively appealing paint, and if he could not imagine that the star-spangled dark out there was Lanscot’s sky as seen from his back garden, he could at least discern familiar constellations, and enjoy the absence of the intervening clouds.
So taken was he with the view that he did not immediately notice the other visitor to the observation platform. She stood where the platform abutted the dome, hands clasped behind her back, chin level, watching the slow dance of a docking ship and its guide mecha ten levels down. Rupert noticed her and jerked, surprised. The platform was made of the same transparent substance as the dome and the steps, and he was certain that it had been unoccupied when he began his ascent. Even the most cursory, fleeting glance would have revealed her. Nor could she have passed him during the climb. She had simply appeared.
Then he took a closer, more complete look, and understood how she had evaded detection. Rupert had been the Vizier of Thorne when last he had seen her, and that had been twenty years and a lifetime ago on a distant planet, but one does not forget a fairy. He was as impressed by the fairy’s demeanor as Ivar had been, though he recovered from his surprise more eloquently.
“I was under the impression you did not enjoy travel,” said Rupert.
She cut him a sour look, sidelong and from beneath lowered eyelids. “I think we have that in common. And yet here you are, Vizier.”
Rupert opened his mouth to object that the title was no longer applicable and to assert himself as a private citizen. Then he considered that the fairy might know something he did not (yet) know, about decisions made by Dame Maggie and whomever she had consulted about his report, and said nothing.
The fairy was watching him more openly now, one eyebrow quirked, the corners of her lips pulled tight. Daring him to argue with her, Rupert thought. Viziers did not argue. They advised. They cajoled. Sometimes they engaged in diplomatic chicanery, which involved knowing when to remain silent.
He moved up beside the green fairy as carefully as if he were approaching Grytt’s large, orange, temperamental cat. He was prepared for a metaphorical toothy hiss, so was surprised by her actual toothy unsmile. Her teeth, he noted, were very white, in the otherwise unbroken verdancy of her, and as sharp as the cat’s. All of them. Then she turned her attention back to the vista. The stars spangled distantly on the black. Much closer, Lanscot’s curve glowed below in the reflected light of the little yellow sun. Clouds swirled over the landmass like the wisps of grey hair. Rupert resisted the urge to press his nose to the transparent alloy and stare down at the planet in a vain attempt to identify familiar landmarks beyond his home continent and the glittering carbuncle that was Eden’s Burg, Lanscot’s capital city and voidport.
“I imagine you know that I have passed your warning on to the appropriate parties,” he said finally, when he had decided she was not going to begin the conversation.
“Mm.” She put the unsmile away and continued to look out the porthole without blinking. She appeared to be considering something, and Rupert briefly entertained an idea of trying to read her aura.
Auras were only electromagnetic manifestations of a being’s emotional state, whatever the biology at the root of it. Just as each chemical produced its own unique spectrum, so did each emotion. While doing so brought an advantage in negotiations, it was also a risk, if the target was at all versed in arithmancy. Whether fairies knew about arithmancy, he did not know, but it seemed best to assume that any creatures capable of crossing great distances without voidship or tesser-hex and climbing to the top of a spiral staircase unseen might be able to detect someone sniffing around their electromagnetic emotional emissions.
Or they might be able to read someone else’s. Rupert quickly assembled a concealing hex for his own aura, which would return bland unconcern to a cursory glance, and which would be obviously a shield to any arithmancer of skill, who would then have to decide whether to allow the shield to remain or try a counter-hex to break it.
The fairy cut him an amused, sidelong glance. “Why do you think I’m here?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because we are not moving quickly enough for your preferences on the task to which we’ve been set. Perhaps because there has been a new development.” He paused. “Has there been?”
“Are you worried about Rory Thorne?”
“Of course I am.”
“So am I.”
“Why? It been quite some time since she was your concern.”
“And how would you know that?” The fairy turned, propping her shoulder against the polysteel.
Rupert flinched. He knew very well that the polysteel was the same stuff as the opaque parts of the hull, hexed for transparency, no more likely to disintegrate and cast everyone into aetherless void. But it still looked as if she were leaning on nothing at all, and that if she tipped too far, she might fall into the void and down toward the docking ships near the center of the station’s ring.
He closed his eyes briefly to banish that image. It was only when he reopened them that he remembered she’d asked him a question, and one for which he had no rational answer except you haven’t seen her since she was an infant.
“Why would she be important to you? One human girl.”
“A princess is not just a girl.”
“She’s renounced the title.”
“Rory Thorne can no more renounce what she is than you can renounce what you are.”
“And I am a Vizier, you say.”
The fairy quirked an eyebrow, one shade darker green than her skin.
Rupert chose to take that as an affirmative. “Is that why you came to Ivar first? Because he is a prince?”
“Ivar was never a prince. Ivar was, and is, a person who prefers to pass unnoticed. No, I came to Ivar because I knew you would ask too many questions. Which you are doing, as expected.” The fairy’s eyes flickered like sunlight through leaves. “To answer your first query: yes. Circumstances are proceeding rather more quickly than we anticipated. You need to leave now.”
“Then it is Dame Maggie to whom you should speak. I have no influence over how quickly she makes decisions about political appointments and forging new alliances with people she’s never heard of before, or arranges passage to distant, unaffiliated systems.”
“Oh. She’ll have heard of those people by now.” The fairy pressed one hand against the dome, and then, after a moment, both her forehead and her nose. “Look down there.”
Rupert told himself firmly that the polysteel would not betray him, and then took a moment to reassure himself that the hexwork was, in fact, intact: no missing variables, no wobbling, only the rigid interlace of equations. Then he moved up beside the fairy and laid his own palm on the dome. The alloy felt neither warm nor cold, which was unsettling, but it was at least reassuringly hard and solid when he leaned against it. The fairy herself radiated heat, or reflected it, a little bit like standing beside a mirror in sunlight; where his elbow and shoulder came closest, he felt small spots of warmth on the edge of discomfort.