Chapter One

Deep in the soil of the Acropolis of Athens, a signal rang out in search of the King. The signal bounced from terminal to terminal throughout the Alexandrian Glory Palace, dancing between security checks and proxy collisions on its way to its ultimate destination. Assistant Night Secretary Lars Ariti, the signal’s progenitor, fidgeted in his control room while he waited for the connection to be established.

The room was cramped, and wood panelled only on one side – the side that would be visible from his monitor camera. One of its three lightbulbs had blown about a week after he started the job, and he had never quite gotten around to replacing it. But it was his, and on a normal day he would not have traded his position for anything else. This was not panning out to be a normal day. Alone in the dead of night, he muttered to himself under his breath, practicing.

“Yes, sir, terribly sorry, it’s just…not ‘just’, it’s…it’s terribly important…no, not ‘terribly’ twice. Oh, come on, Lars.”

Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair and watched the monitor. Two windows dominated the screen. The smaller one reflected his own image through the minute camera below the monitor, while the other displayed a grey ellipsis on an eggshell background that pulsed in time to an unheard beat. Below those, the glyph he had just activated now read ‘Call Waiting’.

While he waited, he had little choice but to observe his own reflection. He was weedy and spotted, and despite his youth his hairline was already receding. The heat and anxiety had caused him to break into a sweat, but his uniform was dark, and he hoped it would hide the stains. Noticing a smudge on his glasses, Lars reached up to clean it off, eager to ensure nothing was out of place when the call connected. Just then the second screen blinked to life, and he thrust his hands back below the desk, almost knocking his glasses off in the process. “Your Glory. My most terrible apologies for waking you at this hour.”

For a moment he entertained the idea of hiding the rest of him below the desk too. Most terrible. What was his problem?

“What is it?” King Aenos 5 glared back at him, his familiar voice booming through the speakers. He was a tall man with a rugged face backed up by several overlapping chins. His advanced years had left him with poor eyesight, squinting into the bright bedroom camera. His loose nightshirt was ruffled and fraying, and possibly even ceremonial; the King wore ceremonial garb almost all waking hours of the day, and there was likely some obscure rite that required the ruler of the Empire to wear such shabby clothing at night too. Once upon a time, King Aenos had been considered attractive. Lars would not yet have been born.

“Urgent message, Your Glory,” Lars stuttered back, his voice sounding tinny to his own ears. “Top priority – they specifically requested that if you were asleep-“

“If I were asleep? And, by chance, did these anonymous dispatchers give any indication that they thought such a possibility was likely? At…” his eyes flickered to the top of the screen, “…just past four in the morning?”

“No, Your Glory.”

“Very well. Is it a military call?”

“No, Your Glory.” Lars knew better than to say more before he was given permission or a direct question. He had been trained for this eventuality, after all. All palace staff were required to attend orientation classes, which included etiquette lessons for conversing with the King. It just wasn’t entirely coming back to him right now.

“Well, that’s something at least,” the King said, more to himself than to Lars. “Military probably has enough on its plate down south. Social? Or maybe Economic?”

“No. Your Glory. Neither.” He got the distinct sense he was being tested.

“Alright, spit it out.”

“It was Science, Your Glory.” In the long pause that ensued, Lars had the unusual sensation of his bones trying to separate themselves from one another, as though each was trying to leave the control room as fast as they could. He sat dead still, hands still below the desk.

“Science? What on Earth does Lord Panagos want at this hour, Secretary?”

“It wasn’t Panagos,” Lars said, and immediately regretted it. Never imply the King is wrong. Dolt. Still, on a sudden burst of bravery and/or loss of his senses, he pressed on. “It was his deputy on call. Kouris. I believe.”

“Kouris? Hmm. And did he describe the nature of the emergency?”

“No, sir. Ah, no, Your Glory,” Lars quickly corrected himself. He was too shaken to mention that neither he nor Kouris had described it as an emergency, nor that Kouris wasn’t a man. “Just that it concerned a recent probe launch, and that it was important. Top priority. But I already said that – I mean not to imply that Your Glory didn’t hear me, just to indicate that I was aware that I was, in fact, repeating myself.”

Aenos 5 squinted harder. “Indeed. And has Panagos signed off on your communications to me?”

“No, Your Glory. I believe he’s… I think he’s asleep.” Lars’ stomach hurt. By now, he just wanted this over with.

“Is he really? How interesting.” The King cracked a smile, very different from the smiles you saw in photos. He stretched up and reached around for a house gown. Lars averted his eyes. “Very well,” came the disembodied voice from the speakers. “Let us wake him and have him meet Kouris and myself in the Flower Room immediately.”

“Immediately, Your Glory?”

“Yes, Secretary, immediately. I do not appreciate being woken up without cause, so I can only assume that there is one. Wake him now. And bring us coffee. If this is how today begins, we might as well be awake enough to face it.”

“Yes, Your Glory. At once.” Lars waited for the King to disconnect the call, and after a couple more seconds of staring he did so. He was now certain that he was being tested. Alone once again, and despite the pipes pumping heat through his control room, Lars felt a chill up his spine. Before getting up to leave, he sent one signal to wake Panagos and summoned Lady Kouris to the Flower Room with another. She had better have a hell of an excuse.

It was said of King Aenos 5 that he never forgot a face, like his grandfather King Aenos 4 before him, and his great-grandfather King Argyros before him, and probably some other encrusted patriarch before him too. Right now, Lars Ariti hoped it wasn’t true, or he’d be out of a job fast. His only consolation was the King had been too bleary to ask his name, but that was no guarantee of safety. He had heard stories – only stories, he hoped – of the King vaguely describing a man that had annoyed him one morning, and his so-called advisors rushing out to find someone who fit the description. The presumed offending staff member was dismissed that same evening. Or so it was imagined, as he was never heard of again. Lars shivered. Too many stories of the palace ended that way.

His own father had been so proud when he had gotten the Palace job. His parents insisted on throwing a party at which his father gave a toast, clapping Lars on the back with a ferocity that almost made him weep. “My own son, chit-chatting with the King himself!” he had laughed. And laughed, and laughed. There had been rather too much laughing on all sides of the family now that he came to think of it. He tried to explain to his father that there was very little chit-chatting to be done, and that he would be mostly concerning himself with the maintenance equipment that connected the various parts of the palace, but he sensed that the message hadn’t gotten all the way through.

“But you’ll have his ear!” his cousin Niko slurred. “The ear of the King is a powerful thing… how’s that song go?”

There was no song, but Lars didn’t say so. “Well, yes, technically I’ll be able to talk to him, but only under very specific circumstances, and…” but Niko had already wandered off to get another drink, leaving him alone at his own party.

The truth was that like Lars, the majority of Assistant Night Secretaries under this King had never seen the man with their own eyes thanks to his famed reticence. Even if His Glory had to be awoken at a late hour, the King preferred that the Executive Secretary do the job. Presumably so somebody else would have to be rudely awoken as the King too often was. So the system was remodelled, his role now folding in technical duties too. That was what had got him the job in the first place; a Significant Merit degree from Ars Infinita wasn’t nothing. But on this signal specifically the Executive Secretary had been bypassed. He would have been bypassed too, and Lady Kouris would have talked to the King herself, were it not for one broken light.

The paths we take are not our own, he found himself thinking, a distant aphorism that might have come from his mother. Before tonight he had thought that phrase meant ‘We cannot choose our destinies’. Now he thought it meant ‘Our destinies could have easily belonged to other people’. It was probably neither.

Lars climbed the stairs out of the dingy technical chambers. Plain stone underfoot became hard wood, and his footsteps echoed through the corridors towards the nearest kitchen. It was silent at this hour, but he was used to that. Few live-in staff were still awake, and unlike some of his predecessors the King didn’t enjoy having excess security stationed at every junction in the Palace. He passed through Coronation Corridor (nobody could remember which King’s coronation it had been named after, but it must have been back when they were still using Rómin numerals) and followed the hand-carved signs to a nearby kitchen. In the more practical wings of the palace signs like these would have been replaced with monitor displays, so whenever a room was reassigned its purpose the woodworkers wouldn’t have to replace every single sign. But if there was ever a chance the King could wander into this corridor, a monitor simply wouldn’t do. Checking his device to ensure he was on the right path, he passed an employee canteen where he saw a colleague who gave him a wave.

“Lars!” she said warmly. “Join me for lunch?” Teresa worked a night watch in a guard’s tower, and like most palace employees had to schedule her meals around her work.

“I’m still due breakfast, as it happens,” he said, suddenly recalling the complaints from his stomach, “but I can’t. I need to make some coffee.”

She nodded and began to reach over to the canteen dispenser, but he stopped her. “Actually, I need to go to an official kitchen. It’s, er…it’s for the King.”

Her eyes widened. “On you go then, Scion. Best of luck to you.” Little more needed to be said – Teresa knew how important such a meeting could be. He gave a small smile, trying to look carefree and failing in the extreme, before moving on.

The kitchen’s spotless interior was empty except for two cleaning robots buffing the countertops. Their three limbs – each armed with a cloth, wax, or strange rolling implement – whirled around with abandon, only narrowly missing each other. They put Lars in mind of well-timed blacksmiths striking an anvil, or perfectly calibrated autocars. Ignoring them, he tapped the glyphs on a terminal nearby to request the King’s personal coffee blend. While he waited for it to arrive from the Supply department, he considered his options. Staying silent was the best choice – pour the coffee and stand back, making no impression. There was then a chance that the King wouldn’t engage him at all, and he couldn’t make an ass of himself again. Not to mention that he hadn’t strictly been invited to the meeting, although he just about had the clearance for the Flower Room. Alternatively, he could make a show of excellence – actively catch the ear of the King just as his cousin had suggested, perhaps by making a particularly cogent point relating to… to whatever it was Lady Kouris would be talking about. As he considered this, he was struck with a staggeringly vast number of reasons it was a terrible idea, but he pushed them away. He could do it. Had he no courage? Had he not been trained? Had they not told him exactly what he had to do? Come to think of it, what had they told him to do? Damn. Once again, the actual wording of that part of orientation escaped his grasp.

Option alpha it was, then – silence is golden. The coffee arrived and he spooned it out, timed the brewing to exactly four minutes and four seconds (per the sparse packaging – the Supply department were very particular) and selected three of the eighty identical white cups lined against one wall to place on the tray. The robots, their campaign against dust and dirt complete, had moved to another room without him noticing. “Excellent point, Your Glory,” he tested. No, silence was the way forward. Anything else sounded cloying. Not that that was a bad thing, but there was a time and a place.

He climbed another set of stairs, now firmly in the upper end of the Palace. Even if he didn’t know it by instinct, he could feel the softness of the regularly replaced carpet and the warmth of the heating that suffused this layer of the building. Balancing the tray in one hand he took a moment to look out an arched window. The palace grounds were empty, of course, and Athens was too far away to contribute much light pollution, so the stars above glittered unhindered. It was a rare thing to see in the world and was maybe the only perk of his job that didn’t also cause him severe anxiety. Before coming to the palace, he had never seen stars quite like that.

Reluctantly, Lars returned to his course and passed through a corridor filled with Right Hands. These top-level advisors were (mostly) men who had risked it all to climb to the highest tier of personal contact with the King. As such, they were important enough to get their own hand-painted portraits, all rendered in shades of grey and greyer. A good Right Hand could influence policy and secure their legacy, like Sir Martin Hadley, who initiated the first exploration of the moon. A bad Right Hand would probably be executed, like poor old Halwell Matsouka, who petitioned his King to make his own position subject to election. The ladder to the top was unsteady, and the higher you climbed the greater the potential fall.

Taking a right at Matsouka’s baffled-looking portrait, Lars made his way to the Flower Room. So named for its mural of flowers on the west wall, it could just as easily have been called the Mountain Room for the mural on the north wall, or the Victorious Warmonger Room for the mural on the south wall. A calming orange-red glow emanated from the chandelier above, a tonic to the black night through the circular glass pane. Kouris was already there, seated in a wide red chair. She raised her hand in casual greeting, brushing a lock of frayed black hair aside as she did so. Lars set the tray down on the side table before turning to her properly and bowing. “Lady Kouris. You’re looking well for the hour.” It was true – she seemed alert and focused, though Lars had rarely seen her any other way. They had studied together briefly at Ars Infinita, although she was several rungs higher than him socially and academically. There had even been a while where he thought she was interested in him, although she wasn’t the sort to come right out and say it. He never acted on his suspicion, and the two had parted ways after graduation – until now.

“Scion Ariti,” she replied, glancing at the cups. “I trust our King is on the way?”

“So I understand from our conversation, yes.” He took a small stool against the side table, out of the way.

“Ah, so you spoke? For the first time?”

“Yes indeed,” Lars specifically didn’t brag, “For a small time.”

“Excellent. I look forward to joining you in that revered club soon enough.”

They sat in silence for a minute. Lars thought about leaving now, never giving the King a chance to see his face again. But something about Kouris’ tone had emboldened him to stay. Just to show her.

“I woke Panagos,” Lars said, suddenly remembering. “He’s sitting in.”

“What?” Kouris specifically didn’t raise her voice. “But this is my news.”

“The King told me to wake him.”

“Maybe if Panagos had shown up to his station once in the last week, he would be in the loop on this, but…” she shook her head.

“Good news, is it?”

“Scion Ariti, it is not yours to ask.”

They sat for another minute. He could leave right now and keep his job secure. Leave the coffee for Kouris to serve. But if he were to stand now as the King entered the room…or worse, bump into him in the doorway…

“What do you mean, ‘that revered club’?” asked Lars.

“You know. Not many get to sit with the King like this. Without the meticulous pre-planning of the conversation already taken care of. We’re off script, as it were. It’s somewhat exciting.”

“I suppose it is. Though you seemed eager to make it that way, bypassing the Exec like that.”

“It was urgent,” she argued, immediately on the defensive as ever, “and I didn’t have time to fill in a form. The discovery we’ve made could change the world.”

“It really seems like you want me to ask what the news is.”

“Not before the King hears it. He decides who gets to know after that. How did you catch the bypass anyway?”

Lars looked up at her innocently. “I was fixing a light.”

“A light.”

“Yes, the ‘King’s Summons’ one down in Control Room B. It wasn’t responding to tests, so I put a temporary hold on autocomms. I didn’t think anything would actually come of it.”

She scoffed. “A light,” she repeated. Another minute passed.

“I don’t…” Lars immediately trailed off, either unsure how to finish his thought or unwilling to do so.

“Speak freely, Scion,” Kouris said.

“I don’t know whether I should talk when he gets here.”

“Talk? To the King? What would you say?”

“Well, quite, I don’t know. Introduce you or something.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. His Glory knows who I am.”

Lars raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? Because he seemed to think you were a man.”

“What?”

“He said ‘he’ when referring to you. When he and I talked.”

“Oh, for heavens’… are you sure?” she fumed.

“Positive.” Lars tried to keep a smile off his face.

“Sodding Panagos told me he’d dropped my name.”

“Language, Lady Kouris.”

“Piss off, Lars.”

“Right you are.”

The door creaked. Both pairs of eyes snapped upward to the ceiling (“a show of respect when the King enters a room in which one is already seated”, Lars remembered in time) but after a brief chuckle a voice said “Just me. Our Glory not here yet, then?”

“No,” Kouris met Panagos’ gaze, the older man settling himself down on a cushioned bench. He seemed to creak just the same as the door. “We were awaiting his arrival.”

“I expect so,” said Panagos, who only now seemed to notice Lars in the corner. “Ah, Mr…”

“Ariti, sir. Scion Lars Ariti.”

“And what is it you do at the Palace, Scion?”

“Assistant Night Secretary, sir.” Lars replied. “I conveyed the message to His Glory from Lady Kouris.”

“Ah. Was she angry?”

“Sir?”

Panagos winked, his face crinkling as he did so. “If I know Lady Kouris, she wouldn’t have wanted to send her message through a Night Secretary. Was she upset not to deliver it herself?”

Kouris bristled. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Panagos, I am delivering my message myself. Scion Ariti here has merely delivered the fact that there was a message to be delivered.”

“I only noticed she was sending the message by accident, actually.” Lars piped up. “I was doing some maintenance on a signal light, and–”

He immediately stopped talking when the door creaked open again, and after a few more seconds admiring the ceiling the voice of the King said “Gentlemen. Lady.”

A chorus of “Your Glory”s broke out. They all looked at him, and Lars saw that he had formally dressed for the meeting. His burgundy suit and pale pink shirt were complemented by a golden-thread cloak and scarf combination. It appeared he was serious about starting the day.

“Well,” said the King by way of greeting, looking around the room, “Shall we have coffee?” Lars was already pouring, trying to stop his hands from shaking. He passed three steaming cups to Panagos, who passed two to Lady Kouris, who passed one to the King. Lars didn’t know Panagos’ title, so he couldn’t be sure he had gotten the order exactly right, but nobody kicked up a fuss. He retook his stool and watched as King Aenos 5 gave Kouris the signal to begin.

“Your Glory,” she said, “At two forty-three a.m. one of our probe receivers picked up a signal from an unusual source. It appears that-“ she abruptly stopped talking as the King raised a hand.

“My Lady, is this information particularly sensitive?” Saying so, he gestured to Lars, whose heart sank. He knew that if she said yes, the King would dismiss him from the room. But if she said no… he looked at Lady Kouris pleadingly.

Her own face was impassive, but Lars could tell she wasn’t happy to have been interrupted. It may have been for that reason that she said, “I should think so, Your Glory.”

“Scion, we appreciate the coffee. You are dismissed.”

“Of course, Your Glory,” Lars said, bowing and leaving. He closed the door silently behind him, only catching the first part of Kouris’ next sentence: “It appears that another probe, similar to our own, but different in…”

He trudged back down the stairs, past the grand window, left the soft carpet behind, through the kitchen and Coronation Corridor, past the canteen (now empty, Teresa having returned to her post), down the second flight, and back to the hard stone and gloom of his department. His moment was gone. His audience with the King had been mercifully brief, but he felt sure he would now never get a chance to prove himself. It wasn’t Kouris’ fault, of course – the information sounded deeply important, but she could have thrown him a bone in the moment. Or perhaps she couldn’t. Her own job might well be on the line, in which case she was in no position to help an old friend – if that’s what they were. Lars wondered if King Aenos knew of their past and had played them off against one another. It seemed unlikely, bu there was no knowing what the King knew. Still, it had left him frustrated. For all that he feared offending the King and losing something important like his job or his head in the process, he really did want to be better. He wanted to be the kind of person who could strive for something. He glared at the office. What good could he do down here?

Well, for starters, he could fix that light. He had only been halfway through when Kouris’ message had come in, but he’d have no shortage of time to finish the job now. Grabbing a screwdriver and loosening his tie, he replaced a wire, fitted the silver casing back around the filament and sent a test spark through. The light, marked “King’s Summons”, blinked on, then blinked off again. That was all.

Or rather, that was all until an hour later, when the same light blinked on again. Lars sighed, reaching for the screwdriver. If he couldn’t even do something so simple as fix a broken light, how could he have hoped for anything better? He tapped, irritated, against the casing, but it didn’t turn off. He checked his monitor and almost jumped out of his skin to see the King looking at him, the faintest hint of amusement in his eyes. He was still in the Flower Room, using a local terminal. Behind him, Panagos was grinning madly while Kouris shook her head, gathering up papers with concentric circles scrawled on them. They seemed to have moved a table into the centre of the room and lit the fireplace.

“Your Glory!” Lars barked. “What, ah, what can I do for you?”

“Scion, you are to report immediately to the Red Briefing Room. Lady Kouris will meet you there. This is a direct order from your King.”

“Yes, Your Glory, at once,” Lars babbled. “But if I may ask…”

“Yes?”

“…What is…that is to say, on what am I being briefed?”

“Your new position.”