Master of Formalities Read online

  Phee leaned in closer, and, in a quiet voice, answered, “Yes, he did tell me, but I assure—”

  “There’s no need,” Pavlon said.

  Soodon raised his hands defensively and stammered, “Milord—”

  “Soodon, wait in the transport.”

  “Lord Pavlon, I—”

  “The transport. Now.”

  Soodon took a moment to scowl at Phee before slinking off to the transport.

  “I do apologize,” Lord Pavlon said. “This is the third time he’s pulled this stunt.” Pavlon shrugged. “What can one do?”

  “You could punish him,” Lady Jakabitus said. “Have him locked up, or terminate his employment, or demote him. You could dock his pay, or just stop traveling with him.”

  “All interesting ideas,” Lord Pavlon said. “I will discuss the matter with him.”

  Lady Jakabitus said, “Of course.”

  27.

  “What do you think this is about?” Shly asked.

  “I don’t know,” Umily said. “Glaz asked us to meet her here, and said she had a special job for us. That’s all I know.”

  Kreet shrugged, his eyes on Shly, his mouth—as usual—closed.

  The three of them stood in the darkened servants’ hall for a moment. It was late. The family was in bed for the night, and usually the staff would be preparing for bed themselves.

  “How’s Gint?” Shly asked.

  “Regenerating again,” Umily said.

  “Oh,” Shly said. She didn’t know whether to say good or I’m sorry, so she said nothing, which also felt wrong.

  Footsteps rang out from the hall, so they turned to look at the entrance and watched as Hartchar and Migg entered. Migg nodded and muttered an embarrassed hello. She knew that word of her and Master Hennik’s little adventure had gotten out, but she didn’t know how many of the details were common knowledge. When the three junior staff members smiled and greeted her more enthusiastically than usual, she got the idea that the entire story had gotten out, which was good news, as long as it never got back to Hennik.

  “Anybody know what this is about?” Hartchar asked.

  Shly, Umily, and Kreet all shrugged, then flinched when Barsparse said, “I’ll tell you.”

  Everyone swiveled to look at the door to the kitchen at the far end of the hall. Barsparse and Glaz entered and approached them.

  Barsparse said, “I wanted to talk to everyone about some of the challenges we’ve been facing. Please, have a seat.” She motioned to an empty table. Everyone took a seat, Barsparse sitting at one end of the table with Glaz next to her.

  “As you know, Ebbler recently took over as my sous chef,” Barsparse said. “He’s a keen young man, but he has no training. He’s a knowledgeable novice. It’ll take him many hours of hard work to get his skills to where they need to be.”

  Nobody said a word. Those who knew Ebbler thought highly of him, but couldn’t argue with what Barsparse had said. Those who knew Ebbler less well were still disinclined to argue with Barsparse.

  “That’s one problem,” Barsparse said. “Another is that some of you don’t understand why we have a kitchen in the first place. You see it as a pointless luxury.”

  Barsparse paused to let the discomfort build. “That’s understandable. You’ve all watched us cook and serve our food for years, but you’ve never eaten any. Your opinions are based on ignorance. Luckily, I have a solution that will fix both problems.”

  Barsparse clapped twice. Ebbler, Wollard, and Phee emerged from the kitchen, pushing grav-platters filled with plates.

  “What you’re about to eat,” Barsparse said, “is not a full meal. You’ve had dinner already, and we don’t want you to have trouble sleeping because you’re too stuffed. Each plate holds a few single bites that’ll give you the sense of an entire dish.”

  Ebbler, Wollard, and Phee placed the plates in front of the staff members. Each plate contained four items. There was a small bit of seared meat covered with a thin layer of some sort of shiny glaze; an assortment of brightly colored vegetables diced, cooked slightly, then pressed into an inch-thick cylinder; a perfect cube that appeared to be made from solid chocolate, but promised to conceal some sort of surprise; and a ceramic cup holding a few ounces of a clear, steaming, amber broth.

  “Everything you see here was prepared entirely by Ebbler, under my supervision,” Barsparse said. “The plan is to have these tastings once a week until I think Ebbler’s ready to ramp things up. Then, perhaps, we’ll move on to dinner once a week. We’ll see.”

  Phee finished service by giving everyone a glass of water, then she and Wollard sat down to their own plates. Ebbler didn’t have a plate. He stood behind Barsparse’s chair, beaming.

  Barsparse lifted her cup of broth and said, “Let’s begin with the soup course.”

  When the tasting was over, the general consensus of the staff was that having a living, breathing, professional chef was a luxury, but it was not a pointless one.

  PART 4

  It is poor form to assume, but it is impossible to function without making assumptions. Thus, proper form dictates that you act on your assumptions without discussing them. Others may assume that you are making assumptions, but they will not mention it. To do so would be to show the world that they are guilty of poor form.

  -Excerpt from the preface of the Academy of Arbitration Instructional Supplement: Unspoken Mutual Understandings: The Force That Holds Societies Together/Apart

  28.

  “Know that two thousand, one hundred, and seventy-one conventional years have passed since the Terran Exodus,” Wollard said. “Today is the fifteenth day of the fourth month. We meet on the planet Apios, in the servants’ hall of Palace Koa, the ancestral home of House Jakabitus and its matriarch, Lady Joanadie Jakabitus. I am Wollard, Master of Formalities for House Jakabitus, and I am currently delivering the daily meeting to the palace staff.”

  Wollard looked over the assembled staff. They seemed attentive and alert. Ebbler was sagging a bit, but everyone has off days.

  “Today looks to be a fairly normal day at the palace. The most notable event on the schedule isn’t actually going to take place here. I refer, of course, to the sports meet this afternoon, which will be Master Hennik’s first. As always, the regular afternoon sports practice has been moved to the morning, and Lord Jakabitus and Masters Rayzo and Hennik will be away this afternoon. I know that we all wish them good fortune, and will be very interested to see how their ranks have changed at the end of the day.”

  The entire staff (including Migg) was hoping the meet would go well for Rayzo and less well for Hennik. It was common knowledge that since their first disastrous match two weeks before, Hartchar had not allowed a rematch. She and Lord Jakabitus agreed that being ranked below Hennik would motivate Rayzo to try harder. If Rayzo were to somehow lose a second match to Hennik, it would likely demoralize him, leading to poorer performance.

  Hennik, for his part, never missed an opportunity to remind Rayzo that he was ranked higher. Nothing fosters enthusiasm for a game more than doing well at it. Hennik had even taken to wearing his sports shorts around the palace, reveling in the bold, black number one emblazoned on its front and rear.

  Wollard transitioned from this expression of the unspoken communal dislike for Master Hennik to an expression of their shared distrust of him, in the form of his and Migg’s prearranged loaded conversation.

  “Good morning, Migg.”

  “Good morning, Wollard,” Migg said, smiling.

  Wollard squinted and said, “Master Hennik seems to be adjusting well to life here in the palace.”

  “Yes,” Migg agreed. “He is particularly looking forward to today’s sports meet.”

  “So I’d imagined.” This would be the first time he’d left the palace since his arrival on Apios. It was a prime opportunity to either attempt another es
cape or to embarrass the Jakabitus family.

  Migg said, “Master Hennik has been putting a great deal of effort into planning his . . . strategies for the meet.”

  “I see,” Wollard muttered. “I certainly hope he hasn’t planned anything that’s against the rules.”

  Migg shook her head emphatically. “No, I can assure you, his sole focus has been on improving his ranking, and nothing he has planned is against the rules . . . yet.”

  “I see.”

  Wollard ran through the usual administrative filler, then the meeting was adjourned.

  Glaz stood and said, “All right. It looks to be a good day, full of work to be done. We’d best all get to it.” As always, the entire staff broke into small groups to converse for a moment before actually getting to work.

  “Wow, Ebbler, you don’t look so good,” Shly said.

  “What? No, I’m fine.”

  “Did you sleep at all last night?”

  “Yes. Some. Enough.”

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?” Umily asked.

  “I am sleeping,” Ebbler said. “But I’m also studying. There’s just so much I don’t know about cooking. I’ve been doing some reading in my spare time.”

  “And have you been learning a lot?”

  “Yeah, but the more I read, the more I realize how little I know.”

  “Sounds like a good reason not to read,” Kreet said. Umily and Ebbler chuckled weakly until they realized that he wasn’t joking, then they chuckled nervously.

  Shly changed the subject. “Of course, they had to move sports practice to the morning today. I was hoping they’d skip it altogether for once.”

  “I bet,” Umily said. “You never thought you’d miss the days when the most you had to deal with was Master Rayzo making moony eyes at you whenever you came into the room.”

  “It wasn’t fun, but it was better than watching him look disgusted while Master Hennik tries to flirt with me.”

  “Doesn’t he realize you’re not interested?” Ebbler asked.

  “You aren’t, are you?” Kreet pressed. “In either of them. That’s what you said.”

  “Of course I’m not, and yes, I think Master Hennik knows it. I don’t think it makes any difference.” Shly thought for a moment, then said, “I take it back. I think it makes it better for him, if that makes any sense.”

  Ebbler and Umily subtly shook their heads. Kreet nodded.

  Shly said, “It’s time we get to work.”

  They heard Glaz say, “Yes, it is,” from across the hall. They all quickly turned, bowed, and went their separate ways. As luck would have it, Shly and Umily had to go the same direction anyway, so they still had a moment for more conversation.

  “Heard from Gint lately?” Shly asked.

  “Got a letter last night.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Dunno. Haven’t read it yet.”

  “Why not?!

  Umily looked terribly sad. “I’ll read it. I just have to work up to it. Does that make sense?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m not a terrible person, am I?”

  “No, heavens no! I’m sure this has been very hard, for both of you.”

  “I don’t know, Shly. It was hard for him at first, but now it’s like he’s not the boy I fell in love with anymore.”

  “War changes people, Umily.”

  “This one sure has.”

  29.

  Wollard stood to the side and tried to remain positive while Lady Jakabitus received her daily briefing.

  The wallpaper Wollard used as a bellwether to divine Her Ladyship’s state of mind had gotten consistently darker and more foreboding with each passing day. Wollard suspected that the patterns were making increasingly less subtle attempts to tell him something.

  He’d thought that today’s pattern showed a large healthy tree surrounding and silhouetting a smaller leafy sapling in the foreground. All of this was rendered in one shade of gray against a field of black, but despite the bleak color scheme, he’d hoped the pleasant nature scene was a promising sign. It was only in retrospect he realized that what he’d thought was a tree was, in fact, a mushroom cloud, and what he’d thought was a leafy sapling was a tall, thin man, not unlike Wollard himself, with flailing arms.

  The leaves were flames.

  The news from the war on Ophion 6 was getting bleaker at a faster pace than the wallpaper. The Hahn seemed determined to harass Her Ladyship’s forces. New countermeasures had been installed, and were as effective as her generals had promised, but the Hahn had answered by sending larger waves of soldiers to overwhelm the defenses. The death toll was appalling on both sides, but Lady Jakabitus knew that her soldiers’ deaths would not concern Kamar Hahn, and she’d come to suspect that his own soldiers’ deaths probably meant little more.

  General Kriz did point out (while wiping his eyes) that thanks to the success of their loss-retardant measures, the death toll numbers were misleading. Most of the soldiers had died many times at this point. Also, the lessons learned by each successive death, and the automatic retraining that was imprinted in the soldiers’ minds with each regeneration, were resulting in more effective fighters. This did little to brighten Lady Jakabitus’s mood.

  Of course, she had any number of devastating weapons she could use to wipe vast swaths of the Hahn’s ground forces out of existence, but doing so would give Kamar Hahn the excuse to do the same, claiming she’d forced the violence. Indeed, Her Ladyship’s Minister of Information—an important position that encompassed the duties of both a pollster and a spymaster—reported that the consensus among the citizens of the civilized galaxy who bothered to keep up with current events was that the recent increase in hostilities was probably caused, or at least exacerbated, by Lady Jakabitus’s adoption of Kamar Hahn’s only son.

  Lady Jakabitus made a point of not looking at Wollard during this report; Wollard, in turn, made a point of not looking at her not looking at him. Instead he watched Phee read her papers.

  Phee pulled out her stylus and hastily scribbled a note. Wollard leaned slightly to see. She was editing someone else’s CV. Her addition read: Keln, you really should stop sending me these messages. You’re going to get me into trouble.

  Wollard whispered, “Instead of going to get, you should probably write, have gotten.”

  Phee’s face went red. She squeezed her eyes shut and dropped her hands, and the stylus and papers with them, to her sides.

  “I’m so sorry, Wollard,” she whispered.

  “I can imagine,” he replied.

  “I was writing that the messages have to stop.”

  “Yes. Now. After weeks of warnings.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve said that it has to stop before, but Keln won’t listen.”

  “Then you should stop telling Keln anything. If someone won’t listen, the best course is to stop talking. For example, you clearly haven’t been listening to me. I could stop burdening you with my unwanted advice and find a protégée who listens.”

  “I’m sorry Wollard, did you have something to add?” Lady Jakabitus asked in the most serene tone of voice she could manage.

  “My apologies, Milady,” Wollard said. “I didn’t mean to disrupt your briefing.”

  “I’m curious, Wollard, would carrying on a conversation during your ruler’s war briefing be considered good form?”

  “No, Milady. I’m mortified to have done so, and I beg your pardon.”

  “You know, Wollard, if you find these briefings tedious, you could stop attending them.”

  “Milady, I would never suggest such a thing.”

  “You wouldn’t have to. I just have.”

  “Lady Jakabitus, again, I apologize for the disruption. My protégée and I were discussing important business, but that is no excuse. I feel strongly that I can be of g
reat use in these briefings.”

  “You were certainly instrumental in the briefing before I chose to adopt Hennik,” Lady Jakabitus said.

  “Quite. These are difficult times, Milady, and in such times, guidance in relation to the Formalities is more valuable than ever. I will cause no further disruptions.”

  “See that you don’t.”

  “Yes, Lady Jakabitus.”

  Wollard stood silently nearby as the briefing continued, neither being asked for input nor offering any out of turn. Finally, the paintings turned back into paintings, and Lady Jakabitus turned to face him.

  Good, he thought. Her Ladyship is understandably irritated with me, and after my disruption she couldn’t turn to me for counsel in front of her generals without losing face, but now that they are gone, she’ll want to know what the Formalities dictate.

  Lady Jakabitus said, “You’re both dismissed.”

  Wollard didn’t understand. “I’m sorry, Milady?”

  “Yes, as you’ve said several times already. You heard the briefing, Wollard, at least parts of it. I have a war on my hands that is not going well, and I need to think with the minimum of unnecessary distractions.”

  “Indeed, Milady.”

  “So, I want you and Phee to leave.”

  “Yes, Milady.”

  “Now.”

  “Yes, Milady.”

  Wollard and Phee started toward the door, but Wollard stopped just short of actually leaving. He stood next to the door and cleared his throat.

  Lady Jakabitus asked, “What is it?”

  “One thing, Milady. I promised Lord Jakabitus that I’d remind you that Master Rayzo has a sports meet today, and that Master Hennik is going to compete as well.”

  “And now you have.”

  “Quite so. I just thought, Milady, that it might help you get your mind off the war if you were to attend the meet.”

  Lady Jakabitus considered this. “Wollard, I just told you that I want to think about the war without distractions, and you have deliberately offered me a distraction.”