The Red Queen shook her head, "You may call it nonsense if you like," she said, "but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!" -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

The day of Marin's coronation dawned bright and cold. Kilan woke up to a servant clearing out the fireplace in his rooms.

"Good morning, my Prince," the servant said, bowing low.

Kilan stared for a moment before his brain woke up enough to process what she'd just said. Prince? He wasn't a Prince! He was just a Grand Duke, and even that title was mostly ceremonial. Then he remembered that after today, he would be the Emperor's brother, and so would be a Prince. The thought left a curiously bitter taste in his mouth. There would be no living quietly in Rethli after this.

Walking down to breakfast was like stepping into another world. Everyone he met on the way, from servants to his uncle's counsellors, stopped and bowed as soon as they saw him. In the dining room where his family took their meals, he found yet more changes. Instead of Særnor sitting at the head of the table and Marin sitting to his left, the positions had been reversed. Now Marin sat at the head, and his wife Balaeron, with their little daughter Tarmleos in the chair beside her, sat on his right instead of Arásy. A servant stood behind Kilan's chair and handed him salt or sugar, or changed his cutlery for him.

This never happened at home, Kilan thought. I don't like it. Do they think I can't even pick up a fork on my own?

At the head of the table, there was an incredibly stilted conversation going on.

"It will be sunny today," Arásy observed, looking out the high, wide windows at the clear sky. "That's good. It would be an awful omen if it rained."

Marin snorted. "Mother, surely you don't believe in nonsense like omens."

"What about nonsense like morality?" Særnor asked abruptly.

Marin's fork scraped sharply against his plate. The noise was shockingly loud in the awkward silence of the dining room.

Kilan looked up, startled. His parents and Marin were engaged in staring at each other as if they were about to have a fight there and then. Balaeron fussed nervously over her daughter, stealing glances at her husband as if afraid to look at him directly.

That was the moment Kilan understood something was truly wrong here.

~~~~

Arásy didn't look surprised to find Kilan outside her door.

"We thought you'd want to know what that was about," she said wearily, rubbing her forehead. "Come in and sit down."

Kilan took a seat by the fireplace, opposite the armchair his father occupied.

"Do you remember our trip to Esergot four years ago?" Særnor began.

"Yes," Kilan said, unsure what this had to do with their strange behaviour at breakfast.

"Did you ever know why we went?"

"The Empress wanted to see you about something." Kilan wished he could elaborate on that, but if he had ever known why they went, he had forgotten about it. All he remembered clearly was how much he had hated the Palace, how dark and empty the rooms had been, how he had searched in mirrors for a glimpse of Death.

"Empress Linish had begun to suspect my brother of embezzlement of tax money," Arásy said. "She -- or her sister the Chief Inquisitor -- had noticed some irregularities in the paperwork, and we were the only people she trusted enough to take her concerns to."

That explained why his parents had looked so grim during their stay in the capital. "What happened then?"

"Vretiel insisted it was all a mix-up and he would get it sorted out, and we had to leave it at that. A year after we returned, Marin went back to Esergot -- to visit some friends he'd made, he said."

Kilan remembered hearing about that. He had been visiting Aunt Biënth and her children at the time, so he hadn't given it much thought. When he returned, he remembered now, Marin had not only come back remarkably quickly, he had gotten married while away. His mother's grim tone made that fact suddenly take on a new significance in Kilan's mind.

"He returned earlier than we expected, and refused to say anything about his stay. Shortly after his return, Margrave Callastes paid us a visit."

"Balaeron's father?" Perhaps he was wrong to immediately assume Marin must have been involved in some scandal. Perhaps his brother had only gone to propose to his future wife.

"Yes." Særnor took over the narrative. "He told us that Marin had seduced Balaeron while promising to marry her, then had fled when he learned she was pregnant."

Kilan's jaw dropped open. How in the name of all the gods had he not known about all this? Had his obsession with the Land of the Dead and its queen so blinded him to events in the Land of the Living?

"We forced Marin to do the honourable thing and marry her before he brought shame on us all. But that incident has permanently damaged our ability to trust your brother will be a good ruler. If a man won't keep the laws of morality or a promise of marriage, how can he be expected to keep other laws or other promises?"

The three of them sat in silence for long minutes. Kilan tried to process the news he had just learned. How could he have been so oblivious to what happened in his own family?

"So you don't expect Marin will be a good Emperor," he said at last.

Both his parents sighed heavily.

"We pray he will," Arásy said. "But unless the gods give him a new character overnight..."

She trailed off.

~~~~

The coronation took place in the afternoon. Servants appeared to help Kilan get ready well over two hours before the procession was due to start.

First they helped him into his homon[1] and kist[2], oblivious to his protestations that he could dress himself perfectly well, thank you kindly. Then they presented him with a red and white mokniris[3] and insisted on helping him put it on. Just when he thought they were finished and would leave him alone now, a hairdresser arrived.

"You can't go to the coronation with your hair like that," she proclaimed, eyeing Kilan's waist-length curls as if they had personally offended her. "You should really have dyed it; that's the fashion nowadays. It's too late now, so we'll just have to style it and hope for the best."

Before Kilan knew what was happening, the hairdresser had pushed him into a chair and begun pulling a comb through his hair, occasionally exclaiming in anger when the comb snagged on a tangle. When she was finished, she'd tortured his hair into an outlandish style where most of it was swept up on top of his head in a shape that made him think of a mushroom, and a few forlorn strands hung down around his face.

She had hardly finished when another servant arrived.

"The procession is about to begin, my Prince."

The coronation began with a grand procession from the Palace to the Temple of Ítaaril[4]. Marin, Balaeron and Tarmleos were escorted to the temple in an open-topped zeim decorated with bouquets and ribbons. They were surrounded by what looked like a small army of soldiers, all in full uniform with their laser rifles over their shoulders. The rest of the soon-to-be Emperor's family, Kilan among them, trailed behind in less richly decorated zeims. Behind them came all the distant cousins, aristocrats, and foreign dignitaries attending the ceremony.

Half the city's population had turned out to see their new Emperor pass by. The streets were almost blocked by crowds of people cheering and clapping. As Kilan watched them, he wondered what they would say if they knew what he now knew.

Would they be so quick to shout, "Long live the Emperor!"?

~~~~

It was over now. Marin was Emperor and Kilan had become a Prince. He should feel happy, or excited, or even nervous, but all he felt was a curious numbness. It was as if he was an outsider watching his own life from afar.

Even Death suddenly appearing behind him elicited no more reaction than a dull sense of surprise.

"Hail to the Prince!" she greeted him in a voice laden with irony. "And how do you like your new prison -- I mean, position?"

Kilan was in no mood to play along with whatever game she was playing. What he needed right now was some assurance that things weren't about to go to hell in a handbasket. "Will he be a good Emperor?"

Death tilted her head to the side like a humanoid bird and studied him in silence for a moment. "Do you truly wish to know?"

Yes, part of him thought. No, another part insisted.

"I don't know," he said wearily, throwing himself down on his bed and staring up at the ceiling. The hair clips the hairdresser had put in his hair scraped against his scalp, making him wince. "Could I change anything, if I knew?"

There was a pause. The bed dipped beside him as Death sat down on the edge.

"You could try," she said. Her voice gave nothing away. "You might even succeed. But what would the price be?"

Kilan turned his head to the side so the hair clips stopped pulling on his hair. "And what will happen if I do nothing?"

"The same as everyone else does." The irony was back in Death's voice. He couldn't be bothered to puzzle over why. "Continue with your life and let the future take care of itself."

She reached out and ran her long fingers through his hair, deftly unclasping each clip she found. When she had set them all on the bedside table she lay down beside him. If this was his old bed back at home, he thought distantly, she wouldn't have been able to do that without one of them falling off the side. For some reason, the thought brought with it a sudden surge of homesickness.

He would have given a great deal, he thought, to be back in Zjurkyu, away from the coronation and the celebrations and the general mayhem of the capital.

"Varan wants to know all about the coronation," Death was saying. "She wouldn't let me leave until I promised to tell her who said, did or wore what, and who forgot their lines and had to improvise, and how badly the palace's wine cellars have been damaged by this business."

That last comment startled a laugh out of Kilan. "I don't know; I haven't gone to the feast."

"I know. Some of my Reapers are watching it."

His eyebrows shot up. "Just because Varan asked you for news?"

"Of course not!" He couldn't see her face, but Death sounded insulted by the mere suggestion. "The Reapers love attending mortal celebrations. Some of them are especially fond of masquerade balls and costume parties, because they can make themselves visible and interact with the living, all without anyone being any the wiser."

That was quite a frightening thought, actually. Had he ever spoken to a Reaper without knowing it?

They lay in silence for some minutes. Kilan began to drift off to sleep.

"Do you want to see her tonight?" Death asked, startling him awake.

It took him a moment to realise what she had said. "Varan? No, not tonight. It's been--" He interrupted himself with a yawn, "--a long day."

Downstairs in the grand dining hall and its adjacent ballroom, the feast in honour of the new Emperor continued. Outside the moons shone down on Esergot, and on many strange sights within it. They shone on few stranger sights, however, than the new Emperor's brother sleeping peacefully, watched over by the embodiment of Death.

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] homon = A tunic worn by both men and women, usually knee-length and embroidered with depictions of historical or mythological events.

[2] kist = Loose trousers worn under a homon.

[3] mokniris = A floor-length robe worn by both men and women, though women's tend to be more brightly coloured.

[4] Ítaaril = The most important goddess in the religion of the Carann Empire.