The Sixteenth of Ophus 2719, One Minute past the Eighteenth Hour
Four-hundred and twenty cycles. The last of the preparations can be made before that silent oscillation has passed. Papers all along the desk, papers in stacks and in bundles. Committee minutes, reports on diplomatic timetables. Reports contradicting the previous reports. Letters complaining about both. The usual business. The matters of the Change are in their final state, what comes after is formality. The ritual votes will be cast and the last minute attempts to seed advantage will be made, for when the Symvoul comes around again. Another cycle, the period of its pendulum measured in days, its hands turning on weeks, on months, on years.
The rituals of the Change will be performed, the transition of authority made manifest by their completion. Anaxas will reach the nadir of its waning, Mugroba the beginning of its rising. It is all laid out in the towers of paper on desks like his own. The secular spells of government have been written, waiting only to be cast. The spells must be secured, and securing takes time. Three-hundred and eighty one cycles. More than enough duration for that. More than enough to close out this part of the day and begin another.
Sufficient cycles to change from one mask to another.
Into green leather boxes the domestic papers go, stacks on stacks laid in archival sepuchures. Foreign policy into blue boxes. Mugrobi matters placed in special compartments all tied up with saffron-colored tape and sealed with lilac wax. His own seal. Certified and cataloged. Official assurances that what is bound up is proper and correct. Assurances that it is sound.
It is sound. It cannot be otherwise, or else he has failed. In this at least, he can dispense with that nagging doubt. More than enough of that in other matters.
Internal governmental matters now, red tape and red boxes, all arranged according to immemorial custom and practice. The usual matters: minutes of committee meetings, legislative proposals, position papers. One of these carries the names of Glazebrooke and Wiggins. A brief smile at old and familiar names. Gods and ghosts, but he wants to go home. Home to the Chancery, to the office behind the indigo door, to a life without conspirators and monstrosities. To Glazebrooke and Wiggins, to Thurlowe and Caseby. Seven days ago he returned and thought his heart would break at the sight of them, at colleagues as dear to him as any tie of blood. No. Dearer still are the ties of ink.
Sentiment for a place and for colleagues. Pining for purpose and for surety, for the trust of his fellows. All gone now, blown away on winter winds. He is not ready to mourn them, not yet. There is too much to do, too many matters before him. Sentiment is a luxury he does lack. One he cannot quite understand. Alien feelings, one of so many of the past year. This one at least is an exquisite discomfort, a pain he can use to shape his focus.
Tonight will require all his faculties, all the focus he can muster. Tonight, the coaja. The meeting of the conspirators. His initiation to their ranks. He will let the scorpion ride on his back, he will risk the sting. Perhaps the turtle shell will be enough, or else they shall both drown in the river. That at least he can assure.
The other papers will assure that. Gods and ghosts he hopes it will assure that, or else he will carry wickedness upon his back to no good end.
All the boxes secured, and he slides them into the office safe. A vast thing, enamel-black and heavier than any he has used before. A benefit of being the Incumbent’s creature. A monolith and a surety. The door clangs shut, the locks shoot home, a ringing sound, almost too much for his ears. Fingers on the dial, he resets the combination, turns it, clockwise, anticlockwise, and clockwise again. Again. And again. Random numbers. Meaningless and empty. He can hold the sequence for a week. By then it will need resetting.
If he survives the week. Conclusion? Uncertain.
Four-hundred cycles and all the work is done. The day is packed away and sealed. Committed to paper and to procedure. It is beyond him now, matters of record for all time.
The clock begins again its measure of the hour. Time, at last, resumes.
Twenty second is all he has to open the door, to pass into the Incumbent’s office, to see the man whose name he has learned at last. To look Tom in the eye and hint at more than he knows. Who in all the netherworlds is Tom? The name means nothing. It appears nowhere in any record he can find. Yet it is the name of the man as he has become. As he always has been?
No. That does not fit. Not if Bailey is to be believed. The lad is a thief. He is not a liar. Tom and the Weaver; they speak in hushed voices, muffled by cloth. All distorted and corrupted. Yet the tone, the cadence, is not that of old lovers. Or so the Thief as said. Best to take the lad’s word on that. He knows nothing of lovers, old or new. Sees no need.
Anatole and Tom. The names at last for ‘He’ and ‘I’. Useful. Leverage, and all still meaningless. There is limited context. It will need to be fleshed out. Fleshed out beyond a few names and some tenuous connection to the Rose and its King. That connection belongs to Tom, to ‘I’, of that at least he is sure. As sure as anything can be when reconstructed from fragmentary utterances and still-guarded memories.
Godsdammit Tom. What are you still hiding? The question consumes him and he has no answer. The Incumbent remains unwilling to reveal these last secrets. I do not care, he wants to say, to scream, if you murdered seven men with your bare hands or had ten-thousand scandalous affairs. You may have defrauded every bank from Thul Ka to Florne and it still would not matter.
Only the conspirators, only their names and their follies matter. Public evil must be revealed. A little private evil he can tolerate. A damn good thing too. He has enough upon his own head.
The crimson door to his office, heavy with all its locks swings open. He passes that last portal, passes into a space that is not his own.
The Incumbent, Tom, preparing himself for what will follow. For the coaja at the Pendulum Club, for the next act in the tragedy of the conspirators.
“Good evening sir. All matters of official consequence are filed and secured. The day, the official day,” he emphasized the word only slightly. “Is concluded.” The unofficial day begins now. A new dawn in the winter twilight. “I have my notes.” He pats the satchel he has slung over his left shoulder. “And I have the reconstructions of the previous meeting. All that is necessary, but it is not sufficient. These personages, the Judge, Trevisani, Prudhomme, and the rest, what else do I need to know of them? What more can you tell me?”