Protolith - Chapter 8, Part 1
(If you're new, start here: Prologue, Chapter links)
The Planetarium & The Debutante
Charlotte’s Present - July 8th, the 202nd Year of the Hog
My Lady Charlotte,
I request your presence at the Cathedral d’Leone tomorrow at sunrise.
Signed,
Beauvoir Eiten-d’Leone, Mother to Ambrose d’Leone the Second
The moon had been at its peak when Charlotte received a letter, summoning her to the Cathedral d’Leone.
She woke when the sun had not yet touched the horizon, tiptoeing around their bedroom while Nathaniel snored. For a meeting as important as this, Charlotte usually had her husband choose her outfit. As she stared at her armoire, indecision bit at her. Surely the Empress Mother would not expect her to wear the finest gown, not this early in the morning. Yet, to be granted audience with her Majesty was an honor few received. She, her late husband, and every Emperor before him would spend half of the year in Lorenzia for the social season, granting the city’s high court one session. The rest of the year was spent visiting every other city’s courts, from the Northern Astriel to the Southern Harcross.
Charlotte’s heart beat like it sat right below the surface of her skin. She swallowed. What she’d thought would be hard — being granted audience and regaining her house — had thus far been the least of her concerns. She thought to their last conversation at Lord Carmine’s home — had she revealed too much of herself? She pulled at the laces of a quilted corset embroidered with golden thread until she ran out of air.
Charlotte looked into the mirror and frowned. She worried that her dress was too casual, or worse yet, too yesteryear. She worried next that her downturned lip pulled her face downward, drooping her cheeks and the bags beneath her eyes. She worried that her corset could only shrink her waist so far as it would make her bust more vulgar. Even the Empress Mother, in her fourth decade and having borne her son less than two years prior, had the archetypal frame of a courtier: petite and graceful.
Charlotte closed her eyes. She breathed in, then out. She stretched her fingers, feeling for her aura …
In the mirror, a self-assured woman stared back. A woman with natural poise who skirted the line between morning and gala attire with unusual ease. She puffed out her chest and straightened her neck until she was satisfied with how her décolletage looked in the morning light. Yes, this would do.
The carriage ride to the Cathedral d’Leone was a long one. Though the palace was not far from uptown by air, by street they had to leave her neighborhood only to backtrack up the mountain. Several switchbacks sank the minutes until she presented herself at the Cathedral’s front door. She rolled her shoulders and moved to rap upon the door. The door swung open just before her knuckles collided with the wood. A young man with slicked-back, chestnut hair stood before her.
“Come,” he said. “The Empress is expecting you.”
Though it had not been retrofitted with gas lamps, the Cathedral funneled the rising sun through a stunning number of skylights and reflective marble. The winding front hall was lit by scattered squares of light as though the tile below them was made of the same golden light. Finally, they arrived in the main hall — the same cavernous room where the Premiere was hosted. Toward the back of the room, the Empress made herself busy with a compartment of levers typically hidden within the wall. She looked over her shoulder, wearing a white lace day-dress. Her hair spilled upon it like fresh ink on parchment.
“Charlotte,” she called out. “You’re late.”
“I apologize — ”
“Don’t apologize for which you are not sorry,” the Empress scolded.
“Fine,” Charlotte huffed. “I hate waking this early. The only reason I knew to rouse myself at this hour was because I was up late enough to receive your letter.”
The Empress raised a brow. “Better. I too prefer the night. But the planetarium, ironically, looks best in the morning.”
“The planetarium?”
Before the older woman could answer, she pulled one final lever. Charlotte startled as the sound of whirring gears filled the room, echoing against the bright white walls. She looked behind her, but the servant who’d escorted her in had disappeared and shut the door. Without anywhere else to go, she approached the Empress albeit warily. The Empress tilted her head upward, motioning for Charlotte to look up.
Look up, she did. The smell of oil and metal upon metal crept into the air. The chandeliers sunk into the recessed ceiling to be replaced with a round apparatus. Like a mobile over a bassinet, several colorful orbs surrounded a center light. As in the hallway, the rising sunlight was funneled into each orb by skylights and mirrors; it looked as though each orb emitted its own light, small stars in their own right. The whirring abruptly stopped, replaced with a new, smoother sound as the orbs began to rotate around the central sun.
“This time of year, at five past six o’clock the sun is at the best angle to illuminate the sun.” The Empress walked aimlessly, her eyes up and hands clasped behind her back. “It’s ten past.”
Charlotte found herself at a loss for words. The “sun” was almost too bright to watch. Three ellipses outward was their own planet: decorated in glowing blue glass.
“I suppose it is still magnificent despite the time.” The Empress continued. “The planets, their orbits and radii, are to scale. The sun should be much larger — imagine it is the light from our sun but not its full form. Have you studied any astronomy?”
“As much as is respectable.” Her aunt found study of the sciences unladylike. She’d ensured that Charlotte received only as much tutoring in the subject as would be expected in court. Imagine the embarrassment for a débutante to believe in the geocentric model! Though Charlotte had stolen away to study beyond what her aunt allowed, astronomy wasn’t her favorite subject.
“My husband was fascinated by the planets and stars. He believed he could divine the behaviors and actions of others in their movements. He had this installed before our marriage, and he could not be convinced of any other renovation. This and this alone would honor his ancestors. Perhaps he thought they sat upon those other worlds, watching him. He was ever so paranoid, after all.”
“Why are you showing this to me?”
“It’s important, I think, to understand the man who was once Emperor. His family rose to power by ruthlessly hunting heretics, yet he would perch on the rooftop, telescope in hand, convinced that far-away worlds could influence our minds. He had a void that faith is meant to fill, and he filled it with this. You fill yours with science, unless I am mistaken.”
“You’re not,” Charlotte replied. “But what of you?”
“Always to the point.” The Empress chuckled. “Come, sit.” She motioned toward a small table, barely room for two, set with a ceramic teapot and small cakes. She sat, racking her brain on the etiquette her aunt had seared into her. Ankles together, a napkin in her lap, elbows off the table and hands on her napkin, unless of course she was eating, then she was to take small bites and brush away any crumbs, should she be careless enough to make any. The Empress sat at an angle, her legs crossed at the ankle. She balanced her elbow on the edge of the table as she sipped her tea. She furrowed her brow.
“Relax,” she commanded. “I don’t bite.”
Charlotte cleared her throat but was glad to let her posture soften. She picked up her teacup and was surprised to find instead black coffee.
“You prefer coffee, yes?” The Empress asked.
For the first time that morning, Charlotte smiled. “I do. Thank you.” She drank heartily before reaching for a breakfast cake. She rarely ate so early, but her stomach was frustratingly empty. She thought she might perish if her stomach growled in the Empress’s presence.
“Tell me, what do you hope to accomplish on the court, if you are to remain in your seat?”
“Truthfully, I know so little on the workings of the court. I don’t know what is even feasible to ask of it.”
“I didn’t ask for feasibility. We have lawmakers and scribes on the lower court for the details. If the court all voted yea on whatever you had to say, what would you do?”
Charlotte bit into her cake. It was frosted and tasted faintly of orange blossom. “I suppose I would first cement my position. I’d allow women to be Head of House, even when there is a viable but younger male relative.” Currently, women only joined the court in true absence of an heir — such as the Empress Mother, serving as regent for her son, or Charlotte, who took her disgraced uncle’s chair. Ambiguity slumbered at the heart of Nathaniel’s claim — so rarely was a woman the only living member of a house that no one had deigned to wonder if a lower family could marry into the court.
The Empress raised a brow, wordlessly bidding her to continue, and sipped her tea.
“I’d petition the University to allow unmarried women to enroll. I would put funds toward tracking the spread of illness. I would allow women to end their marriages and maintain a portion of her husband’s estate — ”
“That, that is interesting.” She set her tea down, dabbed her mouth with a napkin, and said, “Elaborate.”
Charlotte cleared her throat, which became unusually dry. “It’s become a burgeoning law in the South,” she explained. “Women with reasonable claim — perhaps their husband hits her or sires children out of wedlock — can petition to dissolve her marriage. And in these cases, she is owed the standard of living she’d become accustomed.”
“If her claim isn’t reasonable?” the Empress asked.
She thought for a moment before responding. “I suppose she might not be owed her estates, or a dissolution for that matter.” She paused, remembering for a brief moment her wedding. “I cannot imagine why else to end a marriage.”
The Empress shrugged. “Women fall out of love.”
“If only they married for it,” Charlotte replied. Love matches were exceedingly rare, though more likely in the Lower Court or the middle mercantile class than amongst the High Court. Yet, she thought her voice unusually harsh in that moment and was taken aback, almost, by her own tone.
“You make a compelling case.” The Empress stood, hands once again clasped behind her back as she paced. “Now make it to the court, as it stands now, not our imaginary one.”
“Should women be allowed to head their houses, the dissolution of marriage is paramount,” Charlotte explained. “A woman would be disincentivized from marrying if her husband can usurp her seat. It would allow men to wed and gain undue and unearned control over lawmaking — unless she can remove him as she saw fit. Even now on the court …” she chose her words carefully, “ … cannot afford further instability. The Empress’ seat and hers were unsteady: taken the moment their children are sixteen years old — what sixteen-year-old boy could rule more prudently than a woman? — or, when her husband somehow gains the acumen to bend the court against her. Certainly, that would speak more ill upon the court than well upon her husband.
The Empress stopped pacing. “What has led you to that conclusion?”
Charlotte took a moment to steel herself, lest she stutter. “More than one house lacks a viable male heir. The youngest, Lord d’Atlas, is a general; his only heirs are a gaggle of cousins who will duel for his seat. The next, Lord Carmine, has never and may never have a child. His extended family lives outside of Lorenzia, and he does not seem to think highly of them. Lord Verdant is on his deathbed and barely coherent. Even he knows his sons are imbeciles, or else he’d have named them his proxy rather than his daughter.” She took a deep breath before concluding. “High Court is at its weakest in a century. Aging, flanked by young men without a mote of civic duty, and headed by a child and his mother, and even she is distrusted solely for the circumstances of her birth.”
“I didn’t bring you into my house for this disrespect,” said the Empress. Her voice pierced the air, as though it could reach each corner of the room, the surface of each planet orbiting above them.
“No, you brought me onto the court because if my house was finally removed from the High Court, we would not be the only casualty.”
The Empress bristled at the comments but attempted to hide her emotions.
Charlotte continued. “Which would be next: House Carmine? House d’Atlas? Allowing women on the court maintains its strength, maintains its current composition, but more importantly, it keeps your family in power.”
The woman eyed her, lips drawn into a thin line. “Let’s move on. Tell me, what did you feel when we met at Carmine’s?”
Charlotte wasn’t sure how much to divulge to the monarch. “Like static before a storm, on my fingertips and my tongue, I felt you before you even turned the corner.”
“Have you felt this way before?”
“I can tell when someone is near me, even if I can’t see them. But it’s never felt as strong.”
The Empress nodded. “And your appearance?”
Charlotte frowned. “What of it?”
The Empress walked behind her, dragging a finger across the younger woman’s shoulder. “I’ve seen the way you glide through a crowd unnoticed.” She lifted a lock of her hair with her little finger, as though examining its authenticity. Charlotte didn’t dare to breathe. “Or today, you wear constructed confidence like a second skin.”
Words sat perched on Charlotte’s tongue, unable to be voiced. She thought of exclaiming, “What am I?” so her voice might echo across the hall. What was it that this stranger knew of her abilities and her origin that she could not?
“Did you sense me in the hallway, as I did you?” Charlotte swallowed.
“I did then, and I do now. The energy you liken to static, it crawls over your skin. To the untrained eye, your work is subtle. You appear the same, but the way you are perceived is altered. To me, you radiate.” There was something of a threat in those words, like a blade sat between them on a table. As soon as the tension built, it was dismissed as the Empress waved her hand and sat back down. “You should count yourself lucky that I wish you no harm.”
“Why might someone wish me harm?” Charlotte asked.
“Many fear what they do not — cannot — understand.” The Empress paced. “You should learn to use your powers without announcing their presence.” She thought back to how the Empress disappeared from her senses at Carmine’s party. Could she be capable of the same? “May I call upon you again before the end of the season?”
“Yes.” If it could provide her clarity on the origin — or danger — of her powers, then her only choice was to return.
The Empress gave her a curt nod. She sipped her tea, holding the cup handle with two fingers and her little finger poised in the air. “When I asked of your politics, you never mentioned the conflict in the South.”
“I don’t know enough about the motivations of the conflict to make an argument against it.” Finally able to breathe, Charlotte took a drink of her coffee, which was nearly full and lukewarm. “I dislike the economic consequences and have yet to see the upside.”
“Quite the moderated opinion.” The Empress regarded her strangely. “The rebels speak of democracy.”
“And you spoke of witches,” said Charlotte. “Quintus fears the descendants of the Zhenter’ai have begun to gain power.”
She looked her up and down. “Can they not be one and the same? Women who seek to change the governance of their nation — a new name for the same struggle.”
“What we can do — sensing one another — is that not witchcraft?” asked Charlotte. It was a dangerous question but one which has been burning at the back of her throat. Something in her gut told her that the closest tie between her and her late mother was the strange Empress who sat before her.
“It is not your strangeness but your political aspirations which strike fear into the heart of men.”
The Empress stood suddenly, enough to send Charlotte’s heart to her throat. “Come,” said the matriarch, beckoning her forward. “Let me show you how to use your powers without alerting every priest and their mothers of your whereabouts.”
Read more! Chapter 8, Part 2
