Queen Evetéria was some five-and-fifty years of age, with a bulging bush of oily black hair (a wig, I knew), and a narrow, almost pinched face saddened with two spots of rouge. She had never been intended nor trained for the place of power she now occupied, but the unfortunate death of her younger brother, Prince Féliks, in battle against the Liets, and the subsequent passing of her father, King Ánatol, and his childless male heir, Prince Zakháry, before him, left her the only possible candidate for the throne. Thus she became just the second Regina Regnant of Kórynthia, after Her Late Majesty, Queen Grigorÿna i, who had reigned more than a century earlier.
She was not a mean person or an evil one, but she lacked the judgment and decisiveness needed to rule a country as large and diverse as ours. She spent her days in a royal fairytale she called Tighrishály, playing her games of “Praise the Queen” and “Renovate This Room”; and that, with a constant attendance upon the duties of the Church, encompassed all the days of her life.
She shooed away the Lady Balbina, and patted the seat next to her.
“Here, Morpheús. My Scanner Prime absolutely needs to find some of that sooth for me in the æther, so pray do sit down and tell me true: is green the way to go?”
“Indeed, my Queen,” I said, “It’s not easy being green, but I know that someone with your sense of style can always find a way.”
“Oh, I do agree, I do,” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together, almost like a little girl. “Do you hear that, Balby?—it’s green! It’s going to be green!”
“Then green it shall surely be, Your Majesty,” the lady said.
“I hereby order it done!” Evetéria said, putting her hands together once again.
Then she turned sideways to me: “Tell me, Morphy, tell me about my future. What’s in store for me this next year?”
What, indeed? I thought to myself. And what’s in store for you, pray tell, oh soothsayer?
I decided to play at chiromancy. I gently took the Queen’s narrow hand in mine, and turned it palm skyward, slowly tracing the life lines etched therein.
“Hmmm,” I said.
“What is it?” she asked, almost breathless with anticipation. I suddenly envisioned her as a girl of fifteen.
“Hmmm,” I repeated.
“Tell me, tell me, oh do tell me,” she said.
“This is unseemly, Your Majesty,” Bishop Palladios suddenly interrupted. “The Church frowns on such pursuits.”
The cleric was a fat, flashy, frumpy little toad of two-and-sixty years, who owed his meteoric rise in stature solely to the fact that he had been the Queen’s chaplain before her unexpected succession to the throne.
“Oh, you’re such a fussbudget at times, Pallády,” Evetéria said. “Why don’t you go pray for my soul or something?”
She waved the prelate away, and he had no choice but to obey. The Queen could be vacuous and vacillating, but I knew from my own observation that to cross the will of Her Imperiousness could invite sudden and brutal repercussion. Those of her creatures who dwelt in Court quickly became aware that her moods often wavered on the winds of whim.
“Now, Morphy, what do you see in my future?”
I saw plenty of things, including Her Majesty’s undignified death some years hence—for such was the nature of my talent—but I could relate none of these things to Evetéria. They flashed through my mind like a stack of cards, images that slipt by quickly—one, two, three!—and then were gone, barely leaving a trace.
For it is the simple, sad truth that most people do not welcome the simple, sad truth, particularly as it relates to their own lives. Perhaps that is why a hypatomancer can only envision the future of others, and never, ever—of himself.
“A glorious destiny indeed, Majesty,” I exclaimed, in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout the room. “Glorious and grand. You will be known to history as La Demoiselle Décoratrice, the greatest ruler of her kind, who created an entirely new standard of fashion in the East. No one will ever be able to match your fantabulously fantastic designs.”
“Oh, oh, oh,” was all she could say. “You’re so good to me, Morphy.”
She had no idea, which was perhaps just as well. I could feel the silent humor of the wherret beating upon my soul.
“Oh, oh, oh,” the creature whispered in my ear. “You’re so good to me, Morphy.”
I had to bite my cheek to keep from laughing out loud.
“Is something wrong?” Evetéria asked, looking at me with deep concern in her eyes—well, as deep as her concern ever reached with anyone.
“A, um, a frog in my throat, Majesty,” I said. I coughed several times. “Perhaps, if Your Majesty doesn’t mind….”
“Of course, of course. You should retire at once. Oh, thank you, dear Scanner Prime. I shall increase your stipend to three thousands of pounds of salted herring a year.”
Oh, joy! I thought to myself.
“Thank God for all the fish!” Scooter hissed.
I almost lost control at that moment, but I somehow managed to keep my face straight-laced until I reached my quarters.
“Thank God for all the fish?” I said, starting to laugh.
“Well,” my companion replied, “at least one of us gained something from the encounter. Salted herring—why, that’s one of the very best things about Nova Europa.”
“That might be a slightly biased perspective,” I said.
I pulled the cord to order dinner.
I nearly choked when the servant delivered a platter piled high with eels.
CHAPTER THREE
“SHOULD I ASK THE SECOND QUESTION?”
The next morning, I was surprised to receive a summons to a meeting of the Council of State, to be held early that afternoon. As Scanner Prime, I was technically a member of the highest advisory body in the Kingdom, but was rarely asked to participate, since many of my official duties were necessarily kept sealed from public view by my binding oath of privacy. A hypatomancer cannot function without such safeguards—and everyone understands this.
“We need your soundings, Scanner Prime,” the Queen said, when I’d seated myself at the open chair at the middle of the left side of the table. She was perched on her small throne at one end of the great slab of inlaid marble, while Chancellor Gronos sat at the other. The twenty-odd lords temporal and spiritual filled the remaining spots to either side.
“Whatever I can do, Majesty,” I said.
“My government seems to feel that we must decide very soon on a designated successor. The main candidates are our second and third cousins, Zoltán Duke of Walküre, Zacharias Prince of Mährenia, Istiál Count of Kosnick, Víka Count of Westmark, and Karlyna Lady Elasma, who have, of course, been excluded from these proceedings. What sayest thou?”
All eyes turned to me, and I wanted to slither right out the door. This was a pretty state of affairs, indeed. Each of the five “Noblenesses,” I knew, had partisans and detractors, some of them present at this table; and no matter what I said, someone here was bound to take offense. Yet, this is what I was being paid to do: to prognosticate.
Very well, then: I centered myself, closed my eyes, and let my consciousness barely scrape the ætherspace. Without protection—indeed, without my familiar’s help—I could safely venture no further. I posed the question, and waited for the response to come.
I was almost slammed to the floor by the virulence of the images that flashed through my skull, twisting