DGO: Clipped Wings Chapter 2

Alvenica must attend her Convention.
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The rules of hospitality in Midgardian high society were strict, and this was driven into Princess Alvenica's head as a girl studying politics under her mother; one of the simplest mistakes that could be made was failing to offer a guest their due, and being forever branded rude and unwelcoming. To fail at meeting them for a full Convention would drive away even her most ardent supporters, and hand a most fine knife to her enemies in the court. The rules are as follows:

Firstly, food and drink must be made available — at the host's expense of course — at the soonest possible convenience for the guest. To this end, Alvenica had her servants lay out a first course along a black-cherry wood table: simple canapes, cut melons, and crackers for the palate. Others were tasked to circulate with drinks — champagne, given the tastes of her guests — as soon as the first guest arrived.

Secondly, the space must be open and able to breathe, to best support the humors of those in attendance. For this, she'd chosen her vacation longhouse as the setting; it was dominated by great wall to ceiling windows that could be thrown open along each side to coax a gentle ocean breeze through the space. It made for poor defensibility, but this too made it 'open'; the open hand of trust and respect.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the host must be available to greet each guest when they arrive, and no later. To leave someone waiting, when they'd been invited and expected, was ill-advised. So Alvenica waited, sat at the head of a table with only Gawain standing at her side for company. There were eight empty seats, four on each side, each unmarked with no flag, banner, or device to mark the Houses.

Best to let the guests seat themselves and avoid the dramas of unintentional slights. Let them self sort. At least then the ensuing arguments and elbow-pushing would be their fault and not hers.

"It's 1701," Alvenica said. She sat straight-backed in her chair, hands neatly folded in front of her; there were too many eyes here for the ease that she normally adopted around her knight. Her servants and handmaidens had expectations that could not be disappointed.

"So they're fashionably late," Gawain responded easily. "Better them than you."

Alvenica allowed the jab. She could punish her knight for speaking out of turn, but that was something she had never been able to do. Perhaps such a loose leash was poor leadership, but…

A cleared throat filled the hall, and attention fell to a sturdy man in a soft black silk suit at the entrance to the hall. Silence; the first guest was here.

"The Mandate Medici; Visconte Fiore de Medici," he called once all eyes were on him. Longhouse doors swung open, whisper silent on oiled hinges, to admit a man and his one allotted attendant.

The Visconte himself resembled his name: he was a delicately proportioned flower of a man, with pale complexion and painstakingly styled red curls that spilled over his shoulders, soft velour slippers, and a deceptively simple pale green dress of a plunging neckline and flowing waves. The man beside him was almost painfully simple to look at, with his olive green soldier's dress uniform, black beret, and holstered sidearm. The Medici military famously lacked much flare at all, despite the affectations of their ruler.

"Visconte, it's good to see you after so much time," Alvenica called as she stood, as was expected of hospitality. "You're as graceful as ever."

"Princess!" He rushed to her in a whirl of gathered skirts, "You've grown so much since I last saw you! There's not a single beauty that compares in this Empire, I should think. And you should consider me an authority on the subject."

He took her hand and pressed three kisses to her: one to each cheek in a traditional Medici greeting, and the third to her knuckles. His own brand of hospitality, she supposed, but as always she felt a strange air from him. It was impossible to name, and thus impossible to communicate to her people, but the Visconte had always put her ill at ease. A child's queasy stomach, left over from watching the adults from behind her mother's legs perhaps. He had never been anything but warm to her, after all.

Tucked away somewhere in her estate was more than one childhood gift from the Medici mandate, so guilt was of course bundled up in those memories.

"Please, sit. The others should be here shortly." She shook off the feeling gamely, and gestured. With a broad smile he took the seat immediately to her right. His soldier was a shadow behind him, and Alvenica felt the wary respect that passed between Gawain and he.

"Now, please, let me ply your ear! Last I saw you'd only barely stepped into the role of Mandate. Regrettable, how soon it had to happen." He accepted a flute of sparkling gold from a passing servant and offered her a measure of sympathy. "She was a titan of a woman, truly."

"Midgar would not be what it is today without the efforts of my mother. She was the greatest of us." It was difficult to keep a straight face, and she was certain some bit of pain slipped through her control. Some honesty was permissible here. It was only rational for the young princess to miss her mother. "It's been years, and it still feels like yesterday that she passed."

"But of course. Such a loss echoes; surely all of Midgar misses her presence." He offered a contrite smile, and a gentle pat on the back of her hand. "How long must one grieve before a coronation? I admit the particulars of Midgar custom escape me."

How painfully silent was Gawain now, when she is usually so eager to speak her mind.

"Three years and a day, I fear. It's a formality, of course," Alvenica took a sip of her own champagne here, a mask to hide the sudden ice in her gut. "Respect must be paid to the dead, as is proper."

"Making your title more of an artifact than a reality, of course. No need to question your authority, ever?" She hid a thrill at these words, a private worry. "But enough with the past, let us speak on the future while we are still alone. Relatively speaking, of course."

Fiore leaned in with a grin that some ladies-in-waiting would call salacious. "Is it true that you've been to visit the Emperor?"

Fortune was on her side; she was saved from the conversation by the announcement of more Mandates, which dragged Medici's attentions away from her and towards new targets. She breathed a sigh of relief, hidden behind a napkin raised to dab at her lips. The Emperor was a... sore subject.

First was President Lance Tachyon, head of the youngest Mandated House, slick in pinstripes and followed by an unassuming man in sunglasses. A familiar nervous air followed him as he found the seat to Alvenica's left. The relative recency of his induction left him eager to impress; she was given to understand his position was far more tenuous than others.

Then the paranoid Marquis Baron von Herschel, a great bulky man clad in furs as bushy as his mustache, and leathers as oiled as his hair. The Lady Zhou Yanmei, in black and blue riding clothes that were almost daringly Midgardian; Alvenica understood her to be a cultural chameleon, always eager to find something new to play with. Duke Tam Reach, a most modest and unassuming man, small in how he carried himself if not his literal size. Prince Gentle Arms-Wide, perhaps the most genial man she had ever laid eyes on, his smile as wide as his robes were long. Earl Karl Moreau, suit pressed and walk stiff. A new prosthetic, perhaps. And last but not least, the Lord Markus Black, dressed in a contradictory fully white suit. Perhaps for the effect it had against his jet black hair and eyes, but this was a simple guess. He was notoriously solitary.

Each was followed by an attendant, dressed similarly to their Mandate, if simpler and more functional by far. Seats were claied, stilted greetings and conversations had, before the inevitable interruption for the sake of food and drink.

Alvenica allowed them a moment to avail themselves of her hospitality; her mother would say that politicking on an empty stomach was a recipe for disaster, and she was unwilling to discover if that was true or not. It was four canapes and one glass of champagne each — two in Arms-Wide case — that she stood and gently tapped a knife to her own near-empty glass. It rang out sharp and clear.

Silence. They understood their role in the dance well.

"Thank you, my fellow Mandates, for your prompt arrival." Unless they were egregiously late, Alvenica reminded herself, it was best to allow them the illusion of timeliness. Insulting your guest was a worse offence than their own minor lateness. "I fear that we have more to attend to than food and drink."

"But how kind of you to provide!" Gentle called, raising a freshly procured flute in salute. "Why if we held this on Brawuin City we'd have little more than—"

"You'd have ale and meat," Herschel ground out. "What more could you ask for?"

"Salad, for one thing..." Medici whispered with a titter.

"What did you—"

"Mandates." Alvenica's voice cracked in its intensity, a poor mimic for her mother. It got their attention at least. "We have the business of empire to discuss. We should save the squabbles for less important days."

Her first Convention dissolving into petty internecine sniping was unacceptable; her position as Princess was already tenuous and unstable. An inadequate Mandate would brand Midgard weak and ripe for the vultures. Despite her words of camaraderie, she could almost feel sickly-sweet taint to the atmosphere that turned her gut.

"The princess is right," Black said. "This is the wrong venue for sabre rattling."

Zhou grinned, or bared her teeth. "A duel can always be held after. I'm not the only one curious to see if Herschel really can best Medici in swordplay."

"The matters at hand, please?" Tachyon huffed. "Some of us have shareholders to answer to."

A wave of silent mirth passed over the others for a moment, but it passed soon enough and attention was once again Alvenica's. "First the matters internal: trade agreements, tax and tariff, defense compacts, and immigration. You'll find a full list on your personal devices."

She allowed them to load it as they would, on holoslate or through some hidden augmentation. For her part, an unobtrusive clip in her hair lit and projected the list directly onto her cornea. The produced ghostly green text was eyewatering, but the usefulness was beyond reproach.

The conversation that erupted was professional, but tense. Tachyon lead the charge, becoming a one man marketing team for the entire Tachyon Stellar Shipping and Trade Conglomerate. His words were honeyed, and his charisma a nearly physical thing; he almost instantly drew the ear of Arms-Wide and the silent Moreau with his promises of an expanded market for their wines and weapons, respectively.

Herschel, Medici, and Zhou entered into a heady debate, one she had to keep an eye on for fear of a brawl breaking out between the three. Herschel wanted to draw assurances that Medici would better patrol their shared border for corsairs and pirates, citing the unfair losses his men took in this operation. From Zhou he worried about increased trade between their territories that was going untaxed due to outdated laws. The crafty Lady seemed to desire better economic pacts with both men, with decreased luxury tariffs on the line, but of course this was difficult to discern in the midst of the bravado and snipes.

Only Reach and Black remained silent, as they often did. Their demesnes oft seemed to move in lockstep, and she had to wonder what manner of deals and pacts they came too. Contact with them was sparse for Midgard, given their territories lay on the opposite side of the Imperial Sphere.

"But what of you, Princess?" Zhou asked, turning from the men who had become far more interested in bickering about the particulars of what qualified as 'abandoning a border'. "Midgard can't stay alone forever. You are remarkably stingy with your trade agreements." She heard the unsaid words well enough; the more Midgard traded with her neighbors, the more tariff and tax they could extract from the trade.

She shifted awkwardly. "We are a lucky people; when my forebears built the Ring they saw fit to include everything our residents could need."

"All import and no export. Your companies notoriously only sell to the crown, and a few local buyers." Tachyon grumbled from where he was busy drawing up new trade contracts. "And, of course, the Imperial Spacy."

"We export food, and luxury goods," Alvenica protested. It was already slipping away from her; of course Tachyon was only concerned with broadening his technology base. No doubt a subsidiary had made a purchase request and been refused. The great concern was, of course, where did this leave her? How could she best him in that arena?

"While we're on Imperial topics, have you really visited the Emperor?" Zhou whispered, turning so very easily to gossip. "I've only ever spoken to his seneschals. Midgard the rising star, eh?"

"I don't—" There was no time to think here, no time to plan, and the adrenaline simply refused to come to her the way it did in the cockpit. Medici had asked her this as well, how did everyone know?

"The ‘man’ is quite busy," Medici said. "Which makes me wonder why he had an audience with you, Princess. What an interesting position that puts you in."

Something in his tone, warm and pitying like an uncle towards a favored yet misbehaving niece, told her he knew exactly why she'd been seen.

"Trade doesn't matter," Herschel said. "Or how close the Princess is with the boy-emperor. What's the use of this internal squabbling? The rimward powers can smell indecision, and we are only nine."

"Careful, Baron. A lack of respect has killed better men than you, and I would hate to lose my favorite neighbor." Somehow, despite the very real poison in their words to each other, she could feel the warmth of the statement like a roaring fire. "We aren't quite there yet. Stick to the program, yes?"

Lance at least was eager to stick to his guns. "Tachyon Spacy Incorporated requested to purchase a fleet of Hawkmoth models from Rutherford Rocket Technologies," Tachyon inquired, ever the businessman. "But they've received no response. Can you explain this?"

"I don't control Rutherford—" Something stopped her words. Not an interruption this time, but a sudden twist of anxious anticipation. Her gaze lashed up from her conversation partners, flitting about for a source of danger. Gawain behind her tensed, her hand suddenly tense on her saber.

The front door slammed open, and a crier hurriedly shouted as it did, "Captain Norward Valiant, Imperial Spacy!"

The room went stone silent, broken only by the smart crack of his dress shoes on the marble flooring. He was sleek from stem to stern: slicked back ponytail, imperial greatcoat hung loosely over his shoulders, blue and tan dress uniform pressed and crisp. Even the hint of white gloves, tucked into his front breast pocket, were picture perfect.

Alvenica stood stunned for just a moment. This hadn't been in her expectations, in the rhythm she'd begun walking. Valiant stopped at the opposite end of the table, focus hard and locked on the princess herself. Her breath was stolen for a moment, her hands twitched on invisible controls. For just a moment she was there, again, orbiting a different gas giant, in audience with-

"Captain, what a surprise," Medici said. "One would expect an officer of your caliber to arrive announced, and well beforehand."

"Conventions are for Mandate business," Herschel agreed, even if the notion seemed to rankle him. "So why send an agent?"

"The Jovian Empire orders and I follow," Valiant spoke with a simple tone, as if he was discussing the peculiarities of the weather. "Today that brings me to Midgard. The Ring is far more impressive in person than in the vids, Your Highness."

"She has stood strong for hundreds of years now," Alvenica rallied gamely, the subtle prod starting her metaphorical engines. "Are you staying long? I would be more than happy to have you shown around. It is the greatest feat of engineering in our space after all."

The genial words tasted like ash in her mouth. But this was her position, as a mere Princess; the Captain outranked her in many Imperial venues. She was only a Mandate, and he acted with all the weight of Imperial Policy behind him.

"Why send such an agent?" Arms-Wide asked, leaning forward. "This is unprecedented."

"Jupiter retains the right," Valiant stated. He refused an offered champagne flute with a wave of the hand. "I am merely its arm."

Alvenica floundered. It was not a simple trip from Jupiter to Midgard; why send an entire Imperial ship just to get one man into a meeting? She thought, then, of the un-explained mission of the Ghost of the Machine, and some part of her wondered. Had Gawain known of this, and been commanded to keep silent? The urge to glance back was powerful, but it would give away too much of her frenetic panic. The man had such a red-hot focus bleeding from him that she thought for a moment he already knew.

"Does the Emperor not trust us?" Tachyon asked, his voice suddenly cloying and sweet. President he might be, but she knew how he got to where he was now. Men had this way of sucking up to each other after all. "Part of the Mandate described the freedoms we would enjoy, after all."

"And yet, here I am," Valiant answered.

She needed to retain the advantage. What other option did she have, besides the oh so tempting desire to turn, run, and fly a deegee directly into the sun of this system, never to be seen again. What was it that Gawain had taught her in her youth?

'Act first, act fast. Be the one to set the stage.'

"The business of the Mandates is the business of the Empire as a whole," she spoke, cutting off Herschel. Good, he would make a fool of them all. "We are her tributaries, the mighty rivers that feed her greatness. So please, Captain, attend. Your thoughts are much appreciated. Can we pull a chair up for you?"

He waved this off too, but her words had the desired effect; the assemblage quieted to a manageable level. "Today, my thoughts are the Emperor's. And his ultimate concern is, of course, security of our borders."

"Then let us table our discussions of the interior for another day; taxes and immigration do not require us in the same room." Alvenica did not miss the strange kind of pride in how Medici looked her over.

"Finally, the first sensible thing anyone has said all day." Herschel stood and commanded the room. This was, after all, his pet bugbear. "The rim-ward nations grow ever more eager. My spies in the Free Trade League send tell of military buildup, and what few scouts return warn of even worse movement in the barbarian fiefs."

And he had the intelligence to back it up; a small holo-projector created a map of space centered on the far edge of Imperial Space — Herschel's border specifically, because of course that was his mightiest concern. Lines were drawn, describing fleet movements and theorized troop placements. The discussion turned, becoming remarkably pragmatic compared to the gossip of earlier. The Empire had enemies both external and internal, but such was the division of labor: the Mandates would fight the descending hordes at the border, and the grateful Empire would root out divisions internal.

And the greatest of these external concerns was the Free Trade League; she counted no fewer than six distinct fleet movements, positioning battlegroups along key star routes. It was a sometimes trading partner of members of the Empire, of course — for all the social failings their pseudo-anarchist society espoused, they took their label quite seriously — but this did not make them a trustworthy entity.

But Alvenica had a concern, and none of the other Mandates saw fit to voice it, so ready were they to speak of fleet build up and war footings. Her mother had dealt with the Free Trade League in the past, and she remembered their chosen delegate as honest and sure.

"None of these fleet movements seem concerning to me," she pointed at the few that drifted closest to Herschel space, and the one that had trailed off to the side and seemed to threaten Zhou territory. "You've marked systems at the terminus of these movements as barbarian territory; those would of course be a concern to the Free Trade League, same as they are to us."

"And what if they decide to move in, begin chipping away at our space? They already contest the drawn borders; they could attempt to enforce their version of reality." Herschel.

"They're willing to trade with anyone, we can't discount alliances of convenience. Stars willing, they'll deal with some of the more concerning periphery powers, like the Morrow Company." Black, ever practical. “But we must prepare for the worst case; that they will find these fiefdoms to be allies against us.”

"They are a concern," Valiant said. "If a distant one. Opportunistic traders can easily become opportunistic invaders. Spacy strategists have ranked the League as an echomap level concern."

"Watch and wait?" Tachyon said, quoting the Imperial Intelligence handbook from either memory or a hidden augment.

"And you expect us to match naval buildup as well?" Medici said. "Interesting."

"The Empire will consider waiving your yearly troop tributes, in the interest of better fortifying your borders, until the time this concern can be downgraded." Valiant said this, and the Mandates leaned forward over their food.

"The Spacy has no intention to send reinforcements themselves?" Zhou asked.

"Imperial assistance is only recommended in the case of a deltamap or higher concern," Valiant said to her, as even and level as ever. "The Emperor has faith in you, of course. Please, enjoy the rest of your meal."

And he turned to leave, as though his momentary intrusion was expected, and routine. To him it likely was; the Spacy was the gloved fist of Jupiter, and it did not act on its own. Your hand did not find it any more unusual that you should strike with it than pick up a glass.

"Was your presence really necessary for this?" Medici called out, voice ever so curious. "No offense, of course, but this could have been a missive as easily as a visit."

He stopped, for just long enough to answer.

"I go where the Empire wills. No more, no less.