rix_scaedu

kelkyag

“What are we doing?”  Rensa thought that Yannic was being deliberately mysterious for the fun of it.  Having been married to him for almost a week, and after living with him for that time, she could believe that he was capable of that.  She hadn’t had much choice in marrying him of course but Kiriel had and, all in all, Rensa was of the opinion that on that point Kiriel’s head had been firmly screwed onto her shoulders.  Yannic, well being married to Yannic seemed to be rather nice.  But he was still being mysterious.  “Where are you taking me?”

“You could say we’re helping Bannoc win a bet,” he smiled at her conspiratorially.  “We just have to collect my mother and aunt, and then we can be on our way.”

“Are they expecting us?”  Rensa was hoping Tyrren and her sister knew more about this than she did.

“No.  If they’re expecting us, they might not co-operate.  The less the three of you know…,” he trailed off deliberately.

“You’re teasing me!”

“It’s the expression you get just as you realise that,” he smiled then added, “and I’ve told you what that makes me think.”  She dimpled and there was a private moment of warm looks and smiles.  “Parents.  Must collect parents!”  He led her in the direction of the guest rooms again.

“Parents, plural?  Is this something about Mirren?”  Rensa was trotting to keep up, Yannic had longer legs and was much fitter.

“I’ve said enough, come on.”  He hurried along and she couldn’t get anything more out of him until they reached the guest quarters.  There he frankly smoodged his mother and aunt into coming with them and led on towards the public rooms of the palace.

“I know you’re up to something,” his mother shook her head, “and I’m only coming to find out what it is, you understand?”

“Just as long as you come,” was all he said.

When Yannic opened the door Tyrren’s comment was, “Oh?”

Her sister followed her into the room and asked, “Where’s Mirren?  She must be the only one not here.”  Rensa and Yannic followed them into one of the reception rooms.  All of Yannic’s family was there plus a number of Yannic’s friends including brave Kolloc of the fussy plans who was wearing a close coms headset.  In the centre of the room was a pantu rug, the registration book on its stand and a Registrar.

Kolloc said something into his mouth piece and a few moments later the door on the opposite side of the room opened and Bannoc and Mirren entered with Mirren saying, “And why are you wearing that earpiece?  Are you-.”  She stopped as she realised they weren’t alone.  “What?”

“You said that if I got your family together and organised everything we could get betrothed now.”

Mirren’s face worked for a moment and a tear leaked down her face.  “I didn’t believe,” the tears were streaming down her face now, “I didn’t believe,” then she threw her arms around the puzzled Bannoc and buried her face in his chest, “that you really meant it.”

He put his arms around her and looked confused.

I wrote this to kelkyag's third prompt and didn't worry about it going overlength because I needed to write another episode to get more of this story by aldersprig.  :)

Mirren came into Rensa’s sitting room, dragging Bannoc after her, a determined but heart sick look on her face.  “We need you.  He needs you.”  She dragged Bannoc down on his knees beside her in front of Rensa’s chair as the Princess devaunt laid her book aside.

Rensa looked from her lady-in-waiting, guard dog and friend to the man who hated her for what she was and back again.  She sat up straight, hands folded in her lap, copying the her grandfather’s posture when he’d sat in audience not really all that long ago.  “What do you need of me?”

“Highness,” it was Mirren who spoke, “this man has committed a great and vast wrong that his spirit cannot bear.  He is so lost that he does not even know which way he has to face in order to go forward.  Your family bore the brunt of his wrong and you are the last of them.”  Mirren was adapting an old legal formula to the occasion.

Bannoc interrupted her with the rest of it.  “What penance and restitution do you require of me?”

“What wrong did you do my family, Bannoc?”  He had to say it.  That was part of the formula, an admission to everyone including himself of what he had done.

“My squad and I killed all the children of your family, their teachers and their caregivers.”  His admission sat there in the open, no longer the ignored monster in the room.

“I know,” her admission was not in the formula.  “That day, when Trode was gloating over me, I saw the six of you coming back from the nurseries and classrooms.  There was blood spray on your clothes.  Where are the rest of your squad?”

“Boric put a bullet through the roof of his mouth.  Gessic, we called him Marrow, went into a burning house to try to save a family trapped inside.  Warruc walked into a swamp lake with weights in his pockets.  Ludoc’s disappeared and Dennec seems to drink instead of sleep.  What do you want of me?”  He looked at the floor in front of him like a condemned man.

“No-one can bring the dead back to life,” Rensa felt like she was talking around the edges of a stone in the centre of her chest, “so I want you to spend the rest of your life making this a world where that can never happen to any family ever again.  Speak to Tuluc,” she clarified, “and talk about ethics training for the expanded military.  Participate.  If necessary, terrify them that you will come after them if they do wrong.”

He looked up.

“Oh, I haven’t finished yet.”  Rensa leaned forward in her seat.  “No more breaking gym equipment.  You’re an adult, start acting like one again.  If Mirren will have you, then Mirren gets as many babies as Mirren wants.  Do you understand me?”

Bannoc nodded while Mirren blushed.

“She might, of course, consult you in coming to that decision,” Rensa allowed, “But that’s her decision too.  Now, leave me.  I’m sure the two of you need to have at least one conversation alone.”

Bannoc and Mirren retreated from the room, both slightly stunned.

Rensa waited until they were gone then retreated into the bathroom and cried into a towel until the feeling that she might retch and throw up was gone.

I wrote this to aldersprig's first prompt.

“I think we need to talk,” Mirren announced from the doorway.

At the sound of her voice Bannoc closed up whatever it was he was doing on the computer.  “What about?”  He was as brusque as he had been for months.

“Us.  You.  Me.”  Mirren leaned against the door frame.  “Are we still an item or not?”

“I told you,” he glanced at her and then turned his attention to the keyboard, “You don’t want to be with me.”

“That’s your stated opinion, yes.”  Mirren’s eyes were fixed firmly on his face.  “So, I’m allowed to be with someone else?”

“Of course.”  His head snapped up in surprise.

“Then why is it that every time I go out with someone else you break gym equipment in front of them?”  She tapped her foot, “I’ve had complaints – every time I get dumped.  In fact, I get accused of playing games and I don’t play that sort of game!”  She glared at him.

“I don’t mean-“

“Then why do you do it?”  She wasn’t leaning against the door frame any more.  “You won’t go out with me, you won’t sleep with me and you won’t let anyone else do those things with me either.  Where does that leave me?”

Bannoc looked as if he was trying to come up with an answer and failing.

“It’s not as if I expect you, or anyone else for that matter, to marry me,” she snapped at him, “but I thought we were good.  I thought we could be happy together for years...”

“Wait-,” he was confused again.  “Why wouldn’t I marry you?  I mean, me, if you knew-.  But me not marry you?”

“No-one marries the women in my family,” Mirren was stone-faced, forced to talk about something she always tried to ignore, “we’re not good enough, trash.  Always have been.”

“Who’s been telling you that?”  Bannoc was on his feet.  “I’ll kill him.  Do you want to see the body?”

“The world.  All my life.  I don’t want there to be a body.”  She smiled tiredly.  “So what’s with you?  Tell me.”

Bannoc sat down and his face crumpled.  “I killed them.  I believed Trode and I killed them.  All the babies in Rensa’s family.”

“It was a good thing we spoke to you,” said Tuluc precisely addressing Rensa. There were six of them in the compartment of the train travelling back from Montjoy and fortunately none of them were Kolloc. Rensa, at least, could happily have murdered him after a day of sotto voce comments lamenting his original plans for the memorial.

“Yes,” agreed Yannic with his eyes on the man beside him and opposite Mirren. “That original speech would have provoked a riot.”

“Montjoy’s recidivism will require correction,” Sallic had been one of Trode’s closest associates. He was now the Employment Minister, still an ideologue but one who mostly put his energies into useful tasks instead of rants.

“We killed too many locals as well as losing our own people in that attack,” said Bannoc quietly from his seat between Yannic and the window. “We forgot that in places like Montjoy it was local people who manned the counters, entered the paper works, administered the programs. Came for help.” This was the most he’d said in the last two and a half days. “We were told that gas was a painless killer, to be sure to take precautions ourselves, but that our targets would just go to sleep.”

“What dregwit told you that?” Tuluc asked with some heat. “I was very clear when I laid it out as an option what it would do. Constrictor spasms, convulsions, everything.”

“Trode,” said Bannoc simply, “And I kept believing him.” Mirren looked, in quick succession: enlightened, appalled; and then thoughtful.

“I had not realised until yesterday,” said Sallic, stepping into the breach, “That I have become a fan of your late father’s work, Your Highness.”

“Oh?” Rensa was happy to pick up a less awkward conversational ball.

“He signed himself ‘Special Prosecutor,’ not ‘Prince’ so it’s relatively easy to gloss over that his name indicates that he must have been a member of your family. And I hadn’t realised that he was your father.” Sallic beamed benevolently at her. “He did the sort of work I always thought was necessary to protect the vulnerable of our society.”

“He investigated and prosecuted all sorts of matters,” Rensa smiled in return, “But he always said that those who enslaved others by withholding their ration books were deserving of a special circle of hell.”

“He and I may not have agreed on much else, but we would have agreed on that,” Sallic nodded. “Your father’s notes on such matters where he hadn’t had a chance to fully investigate are proving very useful. Unfortunately my current investigators are more limited in their powers than he was – the scope available to a Prince was enormous. Mind you, that was one of the issues we had with the regime when we were the revolution.”

“Well,” suggested Rensa thoughtfully, “Couldn’t you work out which of my father’s powers were most useful to him in his works and have your investigators issued with Warrants or something to say they can do those things in their work?” Looking at their faces she clarified, “I’m not suggesting making them de facto Princes or anything, just some sort of card that says they have authority delegated by the Throne to use,” she grabbed a favourite catch phrase of Trode’s, “For the benefit of the people.”

“I could do that,” mused Yannic.

“Ideologically, I like it,” agreed Sallic, “and it would solve my problems.”

“Yours isn’t the only Ministry that would benefit from an arrangement like that,” Tuluc pointed out, “Different Ministries might require different powers, of course.”

Yannic smiled warmly across the compartment at Rensa. “I’m beginning to think that you might wind up making me look like a brilliant administrator.”

She blushed.

Yannic woke. Suddenly wide awake but unsure why. He rolled over and checked his watch, the glow in the dark numbers bright enough to be read but not light the room. It wanted a quarter of an hour for the alarm to go off. He lay there for a moment. The alarm was still set for the time Kiriel had liked to get up. Up early and into stretching exercises then kata and a five stadia run. That was how she’d liked to start the day, keeping fit the better to fight the revolution. He no longer rolled over in bed at night expecting to find her there but the dull ache of her absence was getting easier to bear. Next week would be a year. In some ways he was glad she hadn’t been around to see Trode’s end. She had been one of his true believers and Yannic believed that his intention to take the throne would have broken her heart.

Now he was Emperor by default because they’d killed all the other acceptable candidates. All the properly educated candidates. The educational package the Imperial Family had put their children through, particularly boys, had stunned him. If his mother had chosen to surrender him to be part of his unknown father’s family instead of hers then that might have been his education. There were days when he felt grossly underprepared. He still did the early morning exercise though he only got to run on a treadmill these days.  There were times when that felt like a metaphor for his new life.

Up and out of bed. Shut off the alarm before it went off. Bathroom, exercise clothes, gym. Nod good morning to the other men who got down here this early and did the whole ‘I don’t really want to talk to anyone yet’ thing. Stretches, exercises, get on a treadmill and run. Mind wandering. Is it a good idea to let Mirren run all over town with her hands full of cash buying clothes? Not too late to stop them going out round the shops today – no, Rensa did need clothes. Needed everything really. So much stuff had been given away after they’d taken over the palace that there was almost nothing left in the private quarters.  He might need to check, had Rensa even asked about any of her old personal possessions? No need for her to ask about her family, she knew what had happened to them. When the twelve month mark came, he would have to make sure he took her to where they’d buried the ashes from the mass cremation, as he would have to remember Montjoy next week.

Bannoc. He wanted to give him a definite position, but he was too liable to fly off the handle at people still. He didn’t like Rensa, not for any personal reason but because of who she was. Yannic had hoped that Mirren would be able to snap him out of this mood he’d been in since the taking of the Palace, no, before that perhaps as far back as Montjoy, but no luck so far.

Off the treadmill, back to his room. Shower, clean clothes and breakfast. On a good day he could finish his newspaper and coffee before someone shoved something important under his nose. There were a few people on his administrative staff that he really didn’t want to know how early he got up in the morning.

Then to the office. There were times when he felt his predecessors had things easy – they told and people did. With the new regime everything had to be negotiated with stakeholders and sometimes he just had to put his foot down and point out the position of the stakeholder holding the upper hand. There were limits to how much wriggle the Central Unit of the CDS would give them. Then there was yelling followed by him pointing out that failure to follow the plan would lead to loss of choice. That was when the yelling generally stopped.

Consider options to meet the targets set in the plan. Rensa’s concerns about the storehouses had some justification, but not quite as much as she’d apparently feared. Apparently there had been a lot of conspicuous consumption carried out in front of the Princess devaunt that had not been reflected elsewhere. There were issues with the requirements for crop production that the revolution had promised to change but turned out to be so deeply embedded into other farming provisions that the untanglement was beginning to look almost insurmountable. It might be another ‘why’ issue to raise with Rensa.

Daily meeting with the Central Unit. Raised Tuluc’s proposal for increase in armed force capability. Central Unit surprisingly enthusiastic and lists additional related milestones in ‘Military Development Tree’.

“Hang on,” asked Yannic startled, “What’s that one, ‘Equatorial Planetary Railgun Net’? Isn’t that a hard set milestone.”

“Yes.” The Central Unit was as unemotional as ever. “The due date is fifty-two planetary years hence.”

“And this milestone tree has never been worked on because?”

“Primary administrator and senior active administrators to date have designated this program tree as requiring other development trees to be completed first.” The Central Unit did not have opinions, it had told him before, it had the results of analysis. If it had been human, Yannic would have thought that it was unimpressed by the thinking that had reached this conclusion.

Yannic made a decision. “I would like a printout of the requirements of each step in the ‘Military Development Tree’ and your analysis of our ability to complete that step at this time without impacting adversely on other programs. Note the likelihood of each step to impact positively on other programs.”

Yannic went to lunch with a stack of very interesting reading.