“I need not be an assassin this hour, no more than you need be Feroccio the Master-At-Arms, nor she the Mademoiselle Pelisse. Shall we all end the masquerade and make our introductions? I am Norbert Noesis Mynyddrhodian of Rosycross, Glorified Endocist of One Donative, son of Yngbert Perpension Mynyddrhodian. I am a Praetor of the Ancient and Honorable Guild of Starfaring and Interstellar Pilgrims Errant who has been commanded by my superiors, absurdly enough, to render a verdict on the sixteen-thousand-year-old issue of the calendar reform. I assume the lady is Cazi, the immortal sovereign of the Fourth Humanity?”
Cazi inclined her head graciously. “So I am!” Her voice was eerie, like the laughter of lutes, with a curious double note. The first was like the throb of a cello, husky, half-breathless, playful, mocking; the after-note was thin and high like a violin, sinister, deadly, and pure.
“Frankly, I thought you a mythical being, ma’am.”
“So I am, again! You may approach on your knees and adore me. Put my big toe in your mouth and suck on it.”
“Thank you, ma’am, but I’d rather not. There will be no living report of you on Rosycross if you rip out my jugular, and that would be a criminal loss to your glory.”
Her tight-lipped smile widened when she opened her mouth to laugh, betraying the glint of very white and very pointed teeth before she covered her lower face demurely with her fan. Turning her head to her companion, she breathed. “Oh, Meany, I like him. He is quick, like one of my girls, and, like them, flatters without meaning it at all. Give him to me, please.”
The tall, bony-faced man said flatly, “Nope. Stop acting like a vixen: how often I gotta tell you you’re better’n that? There is something all balled up going on here, and I am thinking I just been outfoxed again.”
Norbert felt his brash nature rising to the fore. Taking another step forward, he said, “Not outfoxed. Foxes, I have it on good authority, lay their traps with a certain recognizable flavor of panache. Whereas this has a distinctive flavor of patience and large-scale misdirection of events. You have perhaps been overmastered.”
“What the plague does that mean?” growled the tall man.
“This man is my squire of marines attached to the Forever Village, named Ar Thrup End Dragon. I assume he really is a squire, since, as the Most Senior Grand High Master of the Starfaring Guild, his is the authority to appoint anyone, including himself, to that post, just as his is the authority to appoint me Praetor. Judge of Ages, this is the Master of the World. I think you know each other.”
The squire straightened up. The outer layer of what seemed a wooden sword shattered, and the splinters flew in each direction, revealing a silver sword beneath a-dazzle with jacinth and chrysoberyl. The hilts unfolded with a metallic snap. The blade was decorated with a red dragon entwining a white, and the words in gold letters, Ultima Ratio Regum. There was the heavy scent of the air before a thunderstorm issuing from it, which betrayed the presence of directed-energy weapons hidden in the blade.
His uniform dropped the medals and badges of a squire of marines softly to the carpet, but rippled and changed aspect and turned black with a silver cape, shot through with red and purple filiments like the veins of a leaf. On his wrist gleamed the red amulet of the Hermetic Order. He made an adjustment on the amulet. His false skin peeled off in long, strange, floating and curling strips, and the strips evaporated.
Menelaus Montrose looked at the other man, and said, “Arthur Pendragon? You shouldn’t use an alias that gives so much away.”
Ximen del Azarchel inclined his head to Menelaus, then bowed more deeply to Cazi, then grinned at Menelaus. “Should I take tips on inventing an alias from Captain Sterling of Space Command? Norbert did not recognize the name Pendragon. No one reads the classics.”
“I meant the name gives away how damned arrogant you are,” snorted Menelaus. Then Menelaus said to Norbert, “How did you figure out who was who?”
“She is unmistakable,” said Norbert.
The redhead squealed. “Oh, give him to me, Meany! I like him!”
“Hush up, Cazi, or I’ll set the poxed monkeys on you.”
The winged monkeys looked eager and clapped their forepaws.
Norbert said to Menelaus, “Rumor had it she was trying to dig you out of a tomb in Egypt. Also, the Master of the World spent the entire walk here talking about the Tribulations, how the predictions of history went off the rails.”
Montrose nodded, as if that explained everything, but Cazi, leaning forward half-sideways in a way that displayed the fine curve of her naked shoulder, said, “Pray tell, mortal man, how the conversation of the Nobilissimus on so interesting a topic betrayed his identity to you. Amuse me, and I will reward you with a treat!”
3. Interlude, with Fox
Norbert bowed. “Ma’am, I don’t know how to say it to sound amusing, or even to sound like I am not bragging. The Judge of Ages and the Master of the World used to be the smartest men in creation, but they are simply not above average anymore.”
Cazi tilted her head with an angular smile, and looked at Norbert from the corners of her half-lidded eyes, and spoke in a light, lilting voice. “Oh, I would not say that. Ximen believes he is exceptional because he exposed himself to the Monument, and it altered his brain, but he would be exceptional even otherwise. Meany believes he is exceptional because he exposed himself to true love, and it altered his brain, and he would be nothing otherwise. But please feel free to brag! Humble men are dull! They are so hard to play with. They have no strings for fierce, gay foxes to pull.”
“I’ve been educated under the canes of remorseless lore masters, back home,” said Norbert. “And I have a lump of murk in my brain smaller than a hummingbird’s egg but with more calculation power than ever was enjoyed by the nun in the moon. So I know the cliometry. I did a few calculations in my head while we walked.”
“That is not braggy enough!” pouted Cazi.
“I will try to sound more arrogant, ma’am,” said Norbert politely. “Because I have a right to brag about this. The Nobilissimus kindly gave me clues enough to puzzle out what has been hidden from humans for millennia.
“The first clue was his anger at the Shapetaker’s Millenium: When the Salamander fled from the sun, unknown to mankind, history went off the rails. Why? The Tribulations began when the Fourth Humans ushered in a revolution in biotechnology and biosociology, so that anyone could take the shape of any race, hence any rank. And the enfranchised underlings mingled with their betters, interbred, prospered, and quadrupled their lifespans.
“That was not in anyone’s plan. The carefully balanced utopia had ended, but no human was told. We all thought the heresies and tumults were a necessary adjustment period, but still all part of the cliometric Grand Scheme of Things imposed by our Golden betters.
“But the history planners had gone quite blind.
“Who would this anger more than the main history planner of all history? And who was he angry at? Whose actions, whether guided by mercy or madness or what, shattered the caste system of the Long Golden Afternoon of Man? Who unchained us all from the golden chains of time? It was the Foxes.”
Cazi applauded by clapping her folded fan into her other palm. “Hear, hear! All living things must praise the Fox Maidens! Dead things, too! It is a wonder to hear how wonderful we are, me and all my girls! Tell me more.” She giggled. “You do not have to mean it.”
“Yes, ma’am. The next clues were his frustration that the reign of the Golden Lords has not returned. Some chaotic factor was throwing off the calculations. Now, what is the most chaotic thing in Earthly history in the last two thousand years?”