Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

“Alicia, no longer of any Family, place your hand on the orb,” the monk ordered. Alicia, effectively naked now without a Family, followed her instructions. “Your identity is confirmed.”

The monk passed Tiberius a simple pen. “Write your name within the book,” she ordered. Tiberius complied. Alicia, a moment later, followed him. “You are now lawfully united in matrimony until you choose to separate.”

Tiberius smiled slightly. The whole ceremony still felt slightly ridiculous, but it would help keep some of the Family’s more irritating members quiet, including the ones who had loudly wondered if he wasn’t marrying beneath himself. They wouldn’t have been happy with any choice, even the most advantageous match possible, simply because it would push them a step further away from the Headship. They would have no choice, now, but to honour Alicia as one of their own. That would gall them in so many ways…

“Thank you,” Alicia said. She was Family now. He could have told her everything, but he couldn’t take that risk, not yet. He hated thinking in such terms, but he had a responsibility to the Family. “May we leave here now?”

“Of course,” the monk said, almost as if she couldn’t wait to get rid of them. She probably couldn’t. The Families weren’t supposed to remain in the Imperial Register any longer than necessary. Who knew what someone with enough time and cunning might do with access to the master copy? “I shall escort you to your car.”

They didn’t speak until they were back in the aircar, flying away from the fairytale castle and heading back to Tiberius’s estate. “You know,” he said, only half in jest, “we could skip the wedding and move directly to the honeymoon.”

Alicia elbowed him. “I think that my mother would be most disappointed if she didn’t have a chance to watch me walking down the aisle,” she said, firmly. “We can have the honeymoon right after that.”

“Of course,” Tiberius said, his thoughts returning to the wedding… and the awful deed that was going to be committed there. He wanted to order it stopped, now, but there was no choice. Daria had seen to that. They had to use the wedding as cover to assassinate Colin, regardless of his — or her — personal feelings. Alicia would never forget her wedding, even if it wouldn’t be the happiest day of her life. He felt like a heel. He pasted a caring expression on his face. “I shall look forward to it.”

“You look magnificent,” Kathy said, as Cordova posed dramatically. It was easy, just once, to act the bubble-headed idiot. He did look good, wearing a uniform that put Grand Admiral Joseph Porter’s famous uniform to shame, even if it had too much gold braid and medals for her taste. Cordova, at least, had earned most of his medals. Porter, who had died at the Battle of Earth, had obtained his through shameless servitude to the Thousand Families. “Will you keep the sword on for me?”

Cordova glared at her. “I look like a doorman at one of the hotels that are trying to move upmarket,” he said, angrily, as he struggled with one of the fastenings. The uniform wasn’t designed to be easy to get into without help, but he’d insisted on dressing himself. “If I ever meet the idiot who designed the Imperial Navy’s uniforms, I’m going to challenge the bastard to a duel and gun him down without mercy.”

“I think he died a few hundred years ago,” Kathy said, tactlessly. Colin’s reformations had included a new style of uniform for daily wear, but no one had had time to update the dress uniforms yet. With Admiral Wilhelm on the rampage, it wasn’t something that anyone wanted to waste time upon. That hadn’t stopped several officers from trying to find other ways to waste time. Colin had purged them from the Imperial Navy and not, in her view, a moment too soon. “I still think you look splendid.”

“Perhaps I should go naked and claim I’m wearing traditional clothes from that nudist colony,” Cordova said, as he studied his image in the reflecting mirror-field. “Perhaps I should not show up and claim that I’m dressed as the invisible man.”

“Men,” Kathy said, shaking her head again. Cordova did look spectacular, but the uniform was unwieldy, even without the ceremonial sword he wore at his hip. Kathy knew little about sword-fighting, but Cordova had assured her that no one in their right mind would wear a sword like that if they expected to be using it. She was one of only three people who knew that the sword was real… and that Tiberius expected Cordova to use it on his benefactor. “Are you sure that you’re ready?”

Cordova scowled. Tiberius had tipped their hand, accidentally or otherwise, although she was still fairly sure that he hadn’t realised that they’d taken what they knew to Colin. The wheels within wheels were still spinning and she wasn’t sure how much anyone knew, even Colin himself. The plan was simple enough, but if it failed, they would end up carrying the blame for Colin’s death.

Have Colin killed, but not by anyone, she thought, in a burst of surprising anger. She hadn’t realised how much she’d cared until she’d been forced to start making hard choices. She must have grown up a lot over the last few years. Have him killed by one of his allies, so no one knows who to trust, and watch the Provisional Government come apart …

“No,” he said, with a touch of amusement. “I’m not ready, but we don’t have any choice.”

He looked down at his timepiece. “Twenty minutes until we have to depart for the Cicero Estate,” he added, thoughtfully. One finger stroked part of his outfit and he winced. “Perhaps I should put on something more comfortable.”

“Perhaps you should just stay as you are,” Kathy said, firmly. She stepped up to him and gave him a hug. It had been far easier dressing herself, even though she tended to take longer to dress than he did, but she only needed to wear a dress. She’d wondered about buying a really expensive dress, but instead she’d chosen a basic dress. Style never went out of style, as her mother had once said. “If that… outrage against the human eye gets damaged, we won’t have time to fix it.”

Cordova shrugged. “And that’s a problem?”

“Yes,” Kathy said. She could sense his concern and, indeed, she shared it. He understood space combat. Fighting in a crowded room was asking for disaster. “If things start to go wrong together, we could end up dead.”

“My God,” Blondel Dupre breathed, as the aircar started to descend over the Cicero Estate. “Is this how they live all the time?”

Colin privately shared her awe, although he was much more practiced at keeping it from showing on his face. The Cicero Estate, quite literally, stretched away as far as the eye could see, hundreds of kilometres of land that belonged to the Clan, almost completely uninhabited apart from the Family Members, inhabiting their mansions that were small only in contrast to the massive building rising up ahead of them. The architect who had designed the building had combined several different styles into one whole that somehow managed to prevent a different appearance from each angle, keeping any outside observers confused. The building itself was massive, serving as both the home of the core of the Cicero Family and their headquarters. Colin had seen superdreadnaughts and command fortresses that were smaller.

Earth itself was largely uninhabited, a combination of a determined emigration policy and a draconian population control effort. The Federation had believed, or claimed to believe, that there had been too many people on Earth and had been quite ruthless in encouraging as many people to leave as possible, even to the point of enforcing a one-child policy on every human living on Earth. The Empire had taken advantage of the policy and, over the thousand years of its existence, had completely depopulated Earth, apart from their own people. It was the home of the Thousand Families, although Tiberius had once told him that there were still rumours of feral humans living in the wildness away from all settlement. The remains of the older cities had been razed to the ground centuries ago. No one knew if there were really rogue humans out there.