Emilia Gorgon-Vie arrived sharp at two, while Skinner had spent the intervening time somewhat guiltily enjoying the pleasures of her house. She was sitting in the bedroom, experimenting with a new musical scale that she’d heard at a djang house, recently, when Emilia’s man came knocking.
Skinner did her best to explain the situation as plainly as she could: that writing a play was not like building a chair, or tallying a ledger. The work was not there, waiting to be done, but it could only be done when the author was of the correct mind to do it. And this was a fickle, slippery condition, not subject to deadlines or motivation, but only through inspiration. Art cannot simply be commanded, or produced to order, it comes only in its own time.
She managed to deliver the entire explanation with a single, convoluted sentence, avoiding giving Emilia the opportunity to interject a question or a comment. But she was destined to have to stop talking eventually, and when she did, she’d have to suffer the Vie-Gorgon heiress’s response.
That response, as Skinner had expected, was silence. Emilia Vie-Gorgon’s peculiar absolute, untouchable silence that, if it persisted for too long, was liable to make a blind person believe that the young heiress had actually left the room. They’d nearly passed this threshold, Skinner holding her breath ever so slightly, Emilia dead silent, when the woman finally spoke.
“Very well, Miss Skinner. If you’d care to come with me?”
“Ah. Yes? Where?”
“To my coach, Miss Skinner.” Her voice was icily controlled, perfectly modulated, utterly inexpressive. It was an emotional feat that Skinner felt was quite unprecedented. “I’ve something I think you might be interested in.”
As ominous as this sounded-and Skinner could not deny that the whole thing sounded very ominous-she could think of no practical reason to refuse. It was not as though she was doing anything else, at the moment. She put on her coat, and joined Miss Vie-Gorgon in the young woman’s coach, where they sat in quiet for several moments.
“Do you know,” said Emilia at once, giving Skinner a mild start, “Much about my family, and the Emperor’s?”
The Vie-Gorgons and the Gorgon-Vies-of course Skinner knew of them, and knew as much about them as was published in the broadsheets, or taught in history class. “They…you have been feuding for six centuries. About the legitimacy of Owen Gorgon.” Owen Gorgon was a hero in Trowth. He appeared at the end of the Interregnum, and claimed to be the last descendent of Gorgon himself. He’d married Elthea Vie-whose family could reliably trace their ancestry back to the first cousin of Agon Diethes-to cement himself in the Empire, and had crowned himself ruler.
The Gorgon-Vies asserted that Owen Gorgon was in a line of legitimate offspring from Gorgon, and so the Gorgon name ought to come first. The Vie-Gorgons insisted that, since there was an interruption in the line of legitimate Gorgon heirs, Owen must be an illegitimate child, and therefore the Vie name should come first. The family had split, with cousins all taking one side or another, and thus was born the defining relationship of the Empire.
“The feud began,” Emilia said, “over the legitimacy of Owen Gorgon and his name. But while we fought, we were obliged to take positions against each other on principle. If the Gorgon-Vies advocated for a stronger monarchy, the Vie-Gorgons lent their support to a stronger parliament. If the Vie-Gorgons favored an isolationist policy regarding our neighbors, the Gorgon-Vies immediately proposed an aggressive one. If we favored slim towers with narrow windows, they started building square buildings with wide ones.”
“That all seems,” Skinner said, after a moment, “fairly stupid.”
Deathly silence. Skinner discovered it was becoming a little easier not to find her heart in her throat when that happened, now that she was more used to it. “Yes,” said Emilia. “It is, generally. Except that the Gorgon-Vies, and this particular Gorgon-Vie, are wrong. I don’t mean that they’re wrong to fight with us, or to disagree with us. And I am not asserting the principle of my family, which is that whatever the Gorgon-Vies do, it must be wrong-though you would be forgiven for thinking that. What I mean is, they are actually wrong. The Emperor has made nothing but poor choices since his coronation.
“Do you know why he waged the war against the ettercap? Not because they were a threat to us, but because the Gorgon-Vies desired absolute control over the importation of phlogiston, rather than the shared control that had been forced on us. This is implicit in everything the Gorgon-Vies do: they believe in autocracy. That who holds the single most powerful element is the person who controls the most power. The Empire runs on phlogiston; who controls the phlogiston, controls the empire.”
“That seems a reasonable assumption,” Skinner said, recalling how close the city had come to turning into a mass grave the previous Second Winter.
“Yes? While the Gorcia pipelines were shut down, how did we get the little phlogiston we had?”
“Trains, I suppose,” Skinner said. “Indige airships.”
“Both of which the Vie-Gorgons own a controlling stake in. Shutting down the pipelines tripled our family fortune. We gave most of that money away. To charities, sometimes, or to funding certain public works projects. Do you know why?”
“I hadn’t known there’d be a test, Emilia. If I had, I suppose I would have studied harder.”
“Because goodwill is cheaper than armed guards. The Gorgon-Vies spend money to protect themselves against angry peasants; the Vie-Gorgons spend it to ensure that it’s the Gorgon-Vies with whom the common people are angry.”
“Is that what this play is about? Is that why you’re having me write it? To keep attention on the Gorgon-Vies.”
“Yes,” Emilia said. “after a fashion. An Emperor should be accountable to his subjects, shouldn’t he?”
Skinner pondered the implications of this question, and of the fact that it was Emilia Vie-Gorgon asking it. The Vie-Gorgons controlled the Ministry of Information-shutting down broadsheets, arresting and discrediting critics of the Emperor, tightly controlling what was known about him-what could any of that have to do with forcing him to be accountable?
“Certainly…” she began, “there are times when I wish that the Emperor…realized the consequences of his edicts more thoroughly.” Worrying about how to feed herself with six crowns, about where she would live when her boarding-house was closed. “Though I suppose that he is, in his mind, acting in the interests of the Empire.”
“You are quite right-in his mind. By his judgment, he is doing what is best for Trowth. But what assurance do we have that his judgment is correct? It was not judgment that sat him on the throne-certainly not his judgment, anyway. Why should we ascribe the characteristic of judgment to a man simply because he has become Emperor?”
“The Word? Divine provenance?”
“Miss Skinner, I am surprised. Tell me, in all your years as a coroner, have you ever seen the Word actually affect the world? Anything to suggest that humanity is anything except entirely on its own?”
“No, I suppose I haven’t.”
“The Word does not choose our kings. We do. And their judgment is not any better than ours-so, it seems only right that we should attempt to improve on it. Now. We seem to have arrived.”