The Far Bank of the Rubicon (The Pax Imperium Wars: Volume 1) (5 page)

Often the brothers only had small roles in these affairs, but this visit was something different. Jonas and Stephen had been going over it with their tutor Dmitri for a month.

Malek was a thorn in the side of their father—a strong advocate for the rights of the nobility against the needs of the Kingdom. The tension between the two men made visits like this one difficult affairs for the palace. At this point in the day, Jonas didn’t really care. In little more than three hours, his weekend would officially be wrecked by military uniforms and starched shirts. All he wanted was a little time to himself before he had to think cautiously about every word.

Jonas looked up as a giant green shadow passed over the sunshine on the floor, darkening the room. The heart-shaped leaves of a climbing vine passed by the window. Hundreds of stubby little feet pressed into the glass, as it looked for a place where it could find the nutrients it craved. While not unheard of, a plant climbing the palace walls wasn’t an everyday occurrence.

Stephen looked up and smiled. “It must have escaped from somewhere below. That’s fantastic!” He was taller than Jonas, with lighter hair and fairer skin. It was often said that he looked like their late mother. He stood, leaned against the white stucco and reached for the lever on the deeply inset window. Once open, he pushed himself up onto the window sill, letting his belly rest on the cold stone with his feet sticking out in the air behind him. He turned his head upward to see where the plant had gone. Jonas got up and stood next to him.

Stephen ducked his head back in the window and said with an impish grin, “I need a break. Let’s follow it.”

The corners of Jonas’s lips turned upward, “Seriously?”

Stephen hopped back down and looked at his little brother. “It won’t be that hard. There’s a tile roof we can step out on and a good solid unmoving set of vines just to the right of the window. I think we could climb them easily enough. If you look out, you can see an awning or two above us that we can stand on if we’re careful. We can come back in through the royal balcony two floors above. It won’t take any more than fifteen minutes. Besides, the grounds are closed for the big meeting tonight, so there won’t be any tourists, and everyone else is busy, so no one’s going to know. We’ll be back here before Dmitri is even done with his meeting. There’s an ID pad on the door up there so we should be able to get back in without any trouble.”

Jonas wasn’t fully convinced.

Sensing his brother’s hesitation, Stephen grinned impishly. “Come on, little brother. We’ll never get another chance at this.”

Jonas looked around the stuffy library and then back at the data pad filled with useless minutiae on Duke Malek’s favorite drink. He surrendered with ease to his internal need for rebellion. “Let’s do it.”

Stephen shifted his belly back onto the sill and stood, ducking to look out the tall window. Jonas climbed up behind him. Stephen gingerly put his foot out on the tile and tested it. Finding it to be strong and stable underneath his soft-soled athletic shoes and red casual pants, he stepped onto the blue roof and then gingerly moved out of Jonas’ way.

Their ancestors had named the palace the Villa. The builders had constructed it to resemble an ancient Mediterranean style manor with wing upon wing of whitewashed stucco and blue tile, all six to eight stories tall. In the back, lavish gardens billowed out from the open courtyard, flowing into the wild tree meadows beyond. On that side of the Villa, the multi-level terraces, balconies, and bright windows looked out on stunning displays of color and greenery.

In the front, where Jonas now looked, the building appeared to be an ancient fortress on top of a hill. Located right on the edge of the plateau on which it stood, the building could be seen from almost every vantage point in the valley below. Here, whitewashed terraces and blue tile roofs cascaded toward the entry, all of them filled with greenery. The effect created a sense of garden piled upon garden.

Jonas never grew tired of looking at the incredible grounds and gardens of the ancient palace that he called home. Warm afternoons made it all the more wondrous. The gardens were a mix of native plants—many of which moved and so had to be corralled—and those brought by settlers from other parts of the galaxy. Jonas smelled the sweet blossoms growing on the vines near the window as he stood on the sill looking first at the tiles below him, then further out at the grounds four stories down, and then beyond to the valley with its manor homes and the curved spires of the capital Olympia in the distance.

From this vantage, the hill on which the palace sat felt impossibly high. One wrong move or faulty tile and he would tumble to the gardens down on floor two, if not the grounds below that. Jonas’ feet tingled in his shoes, but never one to let his brother do something without trying it himself, he looked down and took a step out onto the roof. The heady rush of adrenaline got Jonas smiling again, and he kept his eyes focused on his trainers as he gingerly moved to the right.

Already his brother climbed above him, stepping from foothold to foothold on the branches of the huge vine which rose up toward the state balcony above. Now standing on the tile roof, it didn’t look as easy as Stephen made it sound.

Jonas found a good grasp on a branch from the vine and hauled himself up just under the shoes above and asked, “So what do you think Dmitri will do to keep us from doing this again?”

“I told you, little brother, he’s not going to find out. We’ll be back in plenty of time.”

“I hope so. I don’t want our afternoon break any shorter than it already is.” Recently, as a small act of rebellion against the rigidity of their lives, Jonas and Stephen had taken to walking to the farthest pond in the gardens for their afternoon break, forcing their tutor to walk out to find them and bring them back for their final session of studies. Even this act of individuality and personality was anathema to the institution of the House of Athena. Dmitri shortened their breaks to compensate.

That said, Jonas thought it was still worth lying by the farthest pond because they got to walk there and back in the gardens.

Stephen had reached the first terrace and had just turned to help Jonas onto it, when Jonas noticed the drone hovering not far away, out over the courtyard. He groaned inwardly. “Nice weather we’re having today, except for the flies.”

Stephen caught the tone in Jonas’ voice and looked out. He turned back toward the building and grimaced. The microphones used by paparazzi camera drones were notorious for picking up even whispers. Stephen remained silent and then reached up to the small balcony above and a little to the left of the slanted roof where they stood. Jonas knew that neither of them would say an unnecessary word before they were safely tucked back inside the building.

There will be hell to pay
, Jonas thought.
I wonder if I will ever see the outside of the palace again.

He followed Stephen up onto the smaller balcony, using footholds in the vine to help propel himself up and over the railing. Jonas hoped the door to their perch would grant them escape from the camera, which was now clearly tracking their movements and likely broadcasting live holographic images (holis) around the kingdom and the galaxy. Stephen looked at the door on their present balcony. There was no ID pad and the door was locked, so onward and upward it was.

Things seemed to go smoothly for the second half of the climb until they got close to the balcony. Here the vine had started to get smaller and Stephen, who was leading the way, was stymied for a few minutes as they approached their goal. There didn’t seem to be a way forward because the vine came up the wall under the large state balcony, which cantilevered out above them. Finally, Stephen was able to work his way over to the side of the vine and, using a nearby drainpipe, climb a little further and then get a hold of the ornate railing where he wanted to go. For a few seconds, his feet dangled in the air as he muscled his way up onto the balcony.

Jonas followed his route. It all went fine until he was hanging on the edge of the balcony with his feet dangling. Below him, it was a straight four story drop to the faux terrace that stood just above the main entrance to the palace. His arms were tired, and he wasn’t yet as strong as Stephen. He dangled there, trying to find the strength to push his way up. His arms wouldn’t cooperate. His heart began to pound as he considered the drop below him. He pushed again, and this time started to rise as his toes found a little traction on the stucco next to him. With this leverage, he was able to reach up for the top of the railing which surrounded the balcony and get a knee on the cornice from which he had hung a second earlier. Hearing his struggle, Stephen turned around and helped him make the final scramble over the railing onto the balcony. It wasn’t graceful, as Jonas ended up on his back after rolling over the railing head first, but Jonas didn’t really care. All he wanted to do was lie on the firm balcony underneath him and let his heart start pumping normally again, but there was no time for that, as the drone continued to focus unwanted attention on their adventure.

He quickly stood up, while Stephen palmed the lock on the double doors behind them. Jonas decided to try to make the best of a bad situation. He turned and waved to the camera. Stephen did the same, and they both smiled, embarrassed before turning their backs and going inside.

Jonas, who entered second, shut the door and pushed his way through the heavy blue velvet curtains. Unable to remember when he had done something so fun and still giddy on adrenaline, he laughed a little as he turned around straight into a welcoming party which consisted of their tutor Dmitri, their Aunt Dora, and Alexander Gomez, the head of security for the palace.

The two boys stood silently. Jonas looked at the floor, while Stephen adopted his usual, confident stance. He folded his hands together behind his back and looked straight into the withering stares of their Aunt and their tutor.

To anyone else, Alex looked pissed like usual. He had a permanent I will rip your head off stare, but to Jonas’ trained eye, he looked amused. You could see it in the slight upward tilt of his scowl.

Without taking her eyes off Stephen, Dora said, “You may go now, Alex. Thank you for your assistance.”

The security officer nodded, then left the room.

Princess Margaret Mary Dorothea Lucille Athena was their father’s younger sister by three and a half years. She carried the height and athletic build of the whole family and was known for her exuberant personality, sense of humor, and hidden toughness. Today she wore her unruly red hair in a long braid and was dressed in her standard military jumper. Besides helping raise the two princes, she worked closely with the foreign office. She ranked a Lieutenant Colonel in the Athenian marines with special forces training. She wasn’t someone to anger, which is why Jonas blanched a little when she said in an unusually low voice, “You were broadcast on GHN.”

Stephen grimaced. “Yeah, we didn’t count on the camera. The grounds were closed today, so we figured there wouldn’t be anyone around.”

Their tutor Dmitri nearly hissed as he looked down his long, thin nose. “You figured? It’s in the playbook. The grounds open to cameras three hours before arrival.”

Stephen didn’t have an answer for that. It was a wonder that both he and Jonas didn’t have the book memorized, considering how thoroughly they had been going over it in the last few days. He took a contrite tone. “How bad is it?”

Dmitri shrugged. “So far, not terrible. They’re playing it up as a ‘boys will be boys’ thing. It will be endearing to many. There will, of course, be the columns and articles discussing the poor example you set for boys everywhere.” He paused, “We will of course issue a statement saying that the little adventure was unauthorized and that you have been properly reprimanded.”

For all the scowling, Dmitri seemed surprisingly low key about the whole thing. They’d had worse scoldings for not finishing their homework over the weekend.

Their tutor remained a bit of a mystery to Jonas. There was no doubt that the pale beanpole of a man loved his students as if they were his own children, but his reserved personality and dry sense of humor sometimes left Jonas unsure of his motives. Dmitri removed the heads-up device from over his eye and sighed, rubbing the screen clean with a cloth he retrieved from his pocket. “Boys, you’ve let me down. Both your Aunt and I will have to give an account of your behavior to your father, but it’s not that. You broke my trust, and I will have a hard time trusting you again in the future. That’s your real loss today.”

“Perhaps if my Father would let me in a little, I wouldn’t be left in the library studying a useless playbook…”

Dora interrupted, shaking her head and raising her voice. “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you, Stephen?”

“I just had a little fun, that’s all. What’s the big deal?”

“Stephen, for two years, Dmitri and I have been working to bring you in, arguing consistently that you’re old enough and responsible enough. How am I going to be able to keep making that argument to your dad? I can’t because he’s not going to want to hear it.” Here her voice, although quieter, started to show her frustration. “Frankly, I’m not sure myself anymore.”

That pulled Stephen up short. Losing Dora’s trust and respect stung. Jonas could see it in the slump of Stephen’s shoulders. He sighed and looked away from Dora for a moment.

Dora continued. “This isn’t one that can just be blown off, Stephen. This is going to make a scene, and I will hear about it from him.”

Stephen nodded. “I understand,” he said contritely.

Dmitri stepped into the silence that followed. “As we have both said to you many times before, your father has wisely chosen to allow you a childhood—a time of innocence without the responsibilities of court life. This was right and good. If we, his counselors, disagree with him on when this time should end, it matters very little. You will be trained, Stephen, long before you need to think about the throne. For now, you need to continue to throw yourself into this time, and this place. Your day will come, and you will be a better King for having had this season of childhood in your life.”