Rock of Ages (8 page)

“But why me? There must be a thousand poor, virtuous, titled Imperialists out there.”

“Well.” A little smile crept onto her face. “If you stand to inherit a fabulous gem like the Eltdown Shard, you spend a lot of your girlhood trying to imagine who’s going to try to steal it from you. Trying to picture the romantic stranger who’s going to fly in the window some night. And, of course, your family security people keep a list of all the top burglars, and you get dossiers…your face crossed my desk when you took out your burglar’s license, and I remember thinking, Well,
there’s
one I wouldn’t mind meeting some dark night…”

“I took out my ticket ages ago. You must have been just a girl.”

“Oh yes. Red hair and freckles and a school uniform that wouldn’t fit. I’m glad you didn’t know me then.”

“I’m pleased to know you now.”

“Are you?” Her eyes sparkled with interest. “Had you considered me a marriage candidate?”

“Frankly, no. I hadn’t thought of myself as suitable.” Maijstral touched his chin thoughtfully, with a forefinger and regarded her, absorbing the creamy shoulders, the intriguing shadows about her clavicles, the gems that sparkled about her neck.

“I
had
thought about trying to get you into bed,” he said, “but on Silverside we were both busy, and we had a business relationship besides, and since I’ve arrived here there hasn’t been time.”

She flushed becomingly. “Well,” she said. “At least you noticed I was trying to make myself attractive.”

“Your grace,” Maijstral said, “I would have had to be as inhuman as a Drawmiikh
not
to notice.”

Roberta smiled a little. “That inhuman, eh?”

There was a moment of silence as the two shared a memory. A Drawmiikh, they had once discovered, was more unforgettable, and inhuman, than either anticipated.

“Your grace,” Maijstral finally said, “this whole marriage situation seems impossibly complex. Couldn’t you just be my mistress for a while?”

She gave a little smile. “I
could
,” she conceded, “but they’d probably make me marry someone else first.”

“I suspected as much,” Maijstral said. There was another little pause. “You saved my life,” he added, apropos perhaps of nothing. “When that madwoman attacked me.”

“Yes. I did; didn’t I?”

He looked at her. “Have I ever thanked you properly?”

Kissing Roberta, Maijstral discovered, was very pleasant, and he prolonged this pleasure for some little while. When there was a pause; Roberta said, “What do we tell everyone?”

“Tell them,” Maijstral said, “that negotiations are ongoing.”

Negotiations onwent a while longer, and then Maijstral and Roberta returned to his father’s room holding hands. Kuusinen and Aunt Batty looked up expectantly.

“We have more talking to do,” Maijstral said.

“What’s the problem?” Gustav Maijstral demanded. “Is the girl ugly or something?”

“No, Dad,” Maijstral said. “Her grace is very beautiful.”

“I order you to marry her whether she’s ugly or not!” the corpse said. “Gad, son, the girl is rich! Think of all the money for the Cause!”

Maijstral offered the Duchess an apologetic glance. Money and the Cause were two of his father’s favorite topics, and once the old man had broached either subject it was difficult to keep him from enlarging upon it. Maijstral spoke up quickly.

“Time for your cocoa, Dad,” he said.

*

An hour or so later Maijstral returned to his own room and called for Roman to unlace him. The tall Khosalikh arrived with a thick leather tube under one arm.

Maijstral looked at the tube, then at Roman, and then at the bare patch of pink flesh on the underside of Roman’s muzzle. He thought he recognized the dangerous red-rimmed look smoldering in Roman’s eyes, and ventured a cautious question.

“Are you molting again, Roman?”

“It has been a year since the last molt, sir.” Roman put the tube on a table and turned to attend Maijstral.

“That long, eh?”

Maijstral made a mental note not to overstress Roman in the next week or so, and not to send Roman on one of the errands that sometimes proved necessary in his line of work— breaking the odd leg, say—not, anyway, unless Maijstral wanted the leg well and truly broken. Roman was not a good molter, and during the height of molt his normally moderate temper tended to veer unpredictably toward the savage.

“Sorry,” Maijstral said. “If you want to just take a week off, I can get along with Drexler and a few robots to handle the lacing and unlacing.”

Roman’s ears flattened. “I am perfectly capable of discharging my duties, sir,” he said.

Maijstral recognized the finality in Roman’s tone. “Of course,” Maijstral said. “I never had any doubts on that score whatever, I merely wished to make you as comfortable as possible.”

He raised his arms to give Roman access to the side-laces. Roman picked at the lace-points expertly. “Was the evening enjoyable, sir?” he said.

“It was eventful, at least,” Maijstral said, and gave his servant a sly, sidelong look. “Her Grace the Duchess of Benn made me an offer of marriage.”

Roman’s ears stood straight up, as did the surprised hair on top of his head. “Indeed, sir?” he said.

Maijstral smiled. He hardly ever saw Roman nonplussed. “She even arranged for my father to come here to Tejas to put his blessing on the union.”

“His late grace is here?”

“Yes. You should probably pay your respects tomorrow.”

“I will not fail to do so, sir.” Roman smoothed down his top-hair, and a swatch of it came away in his fingers. His father had served the late Duke with the same resigned, half-despairing dedication with which Roman served Maijstral, and his grandfather had served Maijstral’s grandfather, and so on back to the first Baron Drago, the Viceroy of Greater Italia in the early days of Imperial conquest.

Roman looked at the tuft of hair in his fingers with distaste and, rather than let it fall to the carpet, stowed it in his pocket. He returned to picking at Maijstral’s laces.

“May I inquire as to the nature of the reply with which you favored her grace, sir?” he asked, his feigned casualness so studied that Maijstral was forced to turn away with a smile.

“Her grace and I,” he said airily, “are still discussing the matter.”

*

Well might Roman’s diaphragm pulse in resignation at this answer. Despite the familiarity brought on by years of association, despite all the adventures shared and obstacles overcome, when all was said and done Maijstral was, quite simply, incomprehensible.

“Very good, sir,” Roman said. Dutiful, as always. Roman was all too familiar with the defects of Maijstral’s situation. They could be summed up as follows:

Money
. For most of his life, Maijstral had been desperately short of money. This situation was not, Roman knew, Maijstral’s doing, but that of his father, who had spent such of the family money as survived the Rebellion in crackpot Imperialist political schemes and who on his death had left Maijstral with nothing but debt.

Maijstral’s response to his fiscal dilemma was reflected in Defect Number Two, to-wit:

Profession
. What better way to get money than to steal it? Allowed Burglary was legal—though barely, in the Human Constellation—and it was, thanks to its regulation by the Imperial Sporting Commission, a profession that a gentleman could adopt without danger of losing his position in society. But some respectable professions were still more respectable than others. Allowed Burglary was lumped in with various other wayward callings, like drunkenness, banking, and the composition of satires, that were permitted but not precisely overwhelmed by the honors and distinctions given more respectable characters like civil servants, courtiers, great actors, military officers, or Elvis impersonators.

If one was a burglar, one was compelled to associate with many of the wrong sort: fences, enforcers, people willing to sell their employers’ secrets, the agents of insurance companies (parasites of parasites, in Roman’s view). Allowed Burglary required an irregular life, and constant travel both to avoid the police and to find new objects to steal. Often burglary was dangerous. It was irregular. Sometimes it was sordid.

But, Roman was willing to concede, it was necessary in Maijstral’s case. It was where his master’s talents lay, and his master, alas, needed to earn a living. His attempts to do so, and to live in the social stratum to which he was born, involved Defect Number Three:

Position
. Though he preferred not to use his title, Maijstral’s theoretical social position was perfectly on a par with the Duchess of Benn’s, if not slightly better: he was descended from one of the oldest human families ennobled by the Imperium—which wasn’t much compared with an old Khosali title that might go back tens of thousands of years, but was pretty good as humans go.

But, due to the misfortunes of his recent ancestors, the titles were empty of anything save honor and debt. Someone of the exalted rank of the Duke of Dornier should move effortlessly in the highest society (without, needless to say, having to steal), should grace government ministries with his talents, should endow foundations and pioneer planets—and, if the political situation should call for his employment as the Hereditary Captain-General of the Green Legion, he should occasionally go out and conquer something.

But none of this was possible without money. It cost a lot to live in the highest reaches of society, and Maijstral had no sources of income not connected with burglary—even the Green Legion was mothballed, its existence memorialized only by a few ancient battle flags hung in a side chapel in the City of Seven Bright Rings. Thanks to a devoted attention to his profession and the fame this had brought him, Maijstral was only now beginning to enjoy the pleasant and civilized mode of life which should have been his from the beginning. But Allowed Burglary was a precarious existence at best, with arrest always a possibility, and though Maijstral’s income was now a comfortable one, it wasn’t anywhere near the state that would have permitted him to live as effortlessly and gloriously as the Duke of Dornier, in Roman’s estimation, ought.

Marriage with the Duchess of Benn solved every single one of Maijstral’s problems. He would have access to as much money as anyone would desire. He would no longer have to earn a living as a burglar. And he would be able to live fully up to his position.

It was, in Roman’s view, nothing less than Maijstral’s
duty
to marry the Duchess. Personalities and the complications of human character didn’t enter into it—as far as Roman could tell, they were unintelligible anyway, even to humans.

Roman finished Maijstral’s side-laces and deftly pulled off Maijstral’s jacket and put it in the closet. Maijstral began working at the side-laces of his trousers.

“I would like, on this auspicious occasion, to make a small presentation,” Roman said. He shifted his shoulders in his jacket. That itch between his shoulder blades was back.

Maijstral’s ears, pricked back in surprise. He looked at the leather tube, then back to Roman.

“Pray go ahead,” he said.

Roman retrieved the tube, uncapped it, and drew forth a scroll. The scroll had been made of grookh hide of the finest quality, thinner than paper and more resilient than steel, suitable in fact for a Memorial to the Throne.

But whereas a Memorial would be written with a jade- tipped pen in large, florid handwriting—emperors and their advisors have to read a lot of documents, and they appreciate large print—the writing on Roman’s scroll was quite literally, microscopic. There was a device in the lid of the scroll case that enabled one to read it.

Roman felt his heart swelling with pride as he laid the scroll out on a table. “This is the culmination of years of research,” he said. “A kind of hobby of mine.”

This was Roman’s Special Project. Many long hours in the composition, he hoped it would prove decisive in this business of marriage. Reminding of the awesome weight and majesty of his ancestors might inspire Maijstral to prove worthy of them.

The itch burned in the center of Roman’s back. Inwardly he snarled in annoyance.

Maijstral looked at the endless lines of tiny print in bewilderment. His trousers were unlaced and he had to hold them up with one hand. “There’s certainly a lot here,” he said.

“I have taken the liberty of tracing the history of the Maijstral family,” Roman said.

Maijstral’s ears cocked forward. “Really?
My
family?”

“Indeed, sir. You will observe—”

“Why not your own family?” Maijstral asked. Roman’s ears flicked in annoyance. The itch brought a growl to his lips. “My family’s history has already been very well documented, sir,” he said. Like most Khosali, his ancestry could be traced many thousands of years past the Khosali conquest of Earth . . . though, also like most Khosali, he was too polite to mention it.

“If you will observe, sir,” Roman began, and deployed the reading mechanism, “I have made some rather interesting discoveries. Your ancestors are far more distinguished than either of us had any reason to suspect.”

“Yes? That Crusader fellow you always talk about—you confirmed him?”

“Jean Parisot de La Valette,” Roman said. “Indisputably. My library researches took me, last night, to Rome, where I had the honor of personally inspecting the records of the Knights of St. John. I found undisputable confirmation, which you will observe . . .” He placed the reader. “Here.”

“Most interesting.” Maijstral manipulated the reader with one hand and hitched up his pants with the other. “The wrong side of the blanket, of course,” he noted. “Typical of my family, I suppose.”

Roman’s diaphragm throbbed. He wished Maijstral wouldn’t disparage his ancestors in that fashion.

One of Roman’s hands crept around behind his back and covertly began to scratch. No good—Khosali spines are somewhat less flexible than those of humans, and he didn’t come anywhere near the itch.

“You will also observe Edmund Beaufort I, Earl and Marquess of Dorset,” Roman said. “His fourth son married a Matilda of Denmark, who was descended from Henry the Lion. You are thus a descendant not only of the Welfs, but Frederick Barbarossa, the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and all the ruling houses of Europe.”